10 Astounding Tales Which Exemplify Dwarf Fortress' Insanity

5. Vaftrudner - Conqueror Of Hell

While well known today, one of the big secrets behind the game was the ability for a player to accidentally tunnel into hell. Often nicknamed €œThe Circus€ by the Bay 12 community, the realm of Satan himself can be accessed by tunnelling down through adamantium veins in the earth or mining through semi-molten rock. Reaching this point is effectively an endgame event as demons will immediately start spawning clown-car style at an insane rate and rapidly overrunning the fortress from within until everything was dead. Naturally, with this being Dwarf Fortress, someone took this €œrocks fall, everyone dies€ event as a challenge. Announced on the forums during late August 2010, one member going by the name Vaftrudner announced that he had not only successfully launched a counter strike back into the burning place of lost souls, but had also managed to colonise hell. With the upper levels of the fortress choked with the bodies of slain hellspawn, the brimstone and fire choked lower reaches were now home to a massive adamantium bastion of dwarves, picking off the odd straggler one by one. Yes, not only had someone managed to beat the game€™s programmed no win scenario without cheats, they had turned it into a complete rout and set up shop in a realm populated with powerful monsters. Better yet, the dwarves seemed perfectly happy to be surrounded by misery, fire and brimstone. Naturally, this being the Dwarf Fortress community, immediate responses to the thread announcing this victory jokingly criticised him for not properly colonising hell and merely building an outpost.