At its core, Dwarf Fortress is a story generator. The following post is but one entry in a single thread of a substantially larger body of historical legend. For more stories, please see the Loremastery tab
To see the table of contents for this particular story, please click here
If you haven't ever generated a pocket world with a low amount of civs and a high amount of monsters, then I encourage you to do so. The cramped confines and increased variability cause all sorts of wacky shit to happen - century-long wars as survivors are picked apart by skeletal dragons, dwarven civs run by goblin vampires, elves being wiped from the map. That type of thing.
I generated a world just now and was surprised to see it enter the Golden Age with nearly 400 years more to go. I was even more surprised when it remained in a Golden Age for the entire generation. The world had 3 civs - dwarf, human and elf - and more monsters than it knew what to do with. How did they not tear each other apart?
The answer paints a pretty bleak picture for democracy.