Long live Zustashadil
4/17/2025 6:36 am | Share to: 
As the date neared, the dwarves began work on their great hall. An expansive cone room designed to amplify the voices on the dais. Day and night they toiled, chiseling and mining out the massive space.
And then on the 6th of Obsidian, when their queen awoke, she alerter her advisors of the vision that today was the day. The day the dwarven fortress Ancientwalls would forever turn their back on the overworld.
The message went out, summoning all dwarves to the great chamber. The speeches were made, from the mayor, from the duchess, and lastly from the queen. As the queen spoke one dwarf, Urist, was dispatched to make the trek upwards. He ran down the halls, trotting up the stairs, huffing and puffing down the final corridor until he reached the two levers. WIthout hesitation he yanked on both, and turned back towards where the citizens were gathered, listening to the mechanisms behind him as they began closing the gates, forever locking them within.
The engineers had cleverly devised a system that would send noises down to the chamber, magnifying the same mechanisms that Urist heard fading behind him as he began the trek back from his ceremonial mission. And as the hall fell quiet, the grinding of gears and ticking of latches echoing and distorted over the distance, until a clang rang out - that noise sending the dwarves into a joyful cheer. "Long live Zustashadil! Long live Zustashadil!"
Zustashadil was the ancient tongue for Ancientwalls. And now, they were forever safe, with caverns to conquer, and no more reason to step out into the sun. Thus Zustashadil had become a hermit kingdom.
This is my current Dwarf Fortress and I had decided around year 107 in game that I was going to do this by 110. I had visions of doing it as the year turned over, but as we got late in the year 109 I decided to just go ahead and pull the trigger. The fortress was relatively large with over 350 dwarves, and it just felt right to do.
For theatrics, I did actually force all of my dwarves into the great chamber and, humorously, that may have borked the game.
I opened it up last night and most dwarves were not working and did not begin taking jobs that were needed. I'm not clear if this is just the game being overly loaded with pathfinding after having all these dwarves in the same place and the calculations for line of sight and path finding being overly taxed, we'll see. I have a different save I can fall back to where I forego the theatrics before closing the gate, if need be.
But, all that said, we'll see what happens to Zustashadil on this new stage of the game.
