I just read the awesome tale of the succession fort Battlefailed. I want to try my hand at a succession fort someday soon, so I figured what better way to test my mettle and produce a "resume" than to try reclaiming this one. Here's what's happened so far.
The records of Kikrost Duralkosoth of the Reclamation of Battlefailed
Year 516
Let it be recorded here, for all time, that Tosid Bervor has a Legendary skill at getting lost. We and our five other stout companions set out to found a settlement on the shore of some pleasant ocean, with basking sharks, salmon, cod and longnose gar and other such wonderful things (mussels would likely be a necessary evil I'd just have to put up with). But with Tosid a the reins of the cart... I was awakened one evening from a pleasantly drunken nap by a sudden bump as the cart came to a stop. "I guess we're here," Tosid called out. I climbed out of the little nest I'd made for myself, blinking in bleary-eyed confusion at the sight that confronted me. To this day, none of us - not even Tosid - could tell you how he'd done it.
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The cart had come to a stop on the roof of a rough stone structure of some sort a good three stories above the ground. There was literally no way it could have got up there, and more importantly there was no way it could get down. From our vantage point we could immediately see a number of foreboding details of the place we'd found ourselves in. It was a lifeless mess; there were vast quantities of skeletons and junk of every description scattered everywhere. An abandoned fortress. Recently abandoned too, by the look of it; the structure we were on had an array of windmills that turned in the fetid wind, the gears and axles of a small pump stack still creaking and rattling in a mostly functional manner. Where were we? Then I saw the answer and my heart sank screaming into the depths to hide. It was hard to recognize when viewed from the back side, but on the end of the structure that hung out over the fortress walls below was an enormous sculpture of a skull built from creepy white blocks.
Battlefailed. The fort was Legendary, but not at all in a good way. I remembered the palpable sense of relief that had circulated through the mountainhomes when word had reached us that it had finally fallen. No longer would anybody have to fear being sent there as migrants by the mad Queen Led. And not even the Queen would have dared suggest a reclaimation party be sent there. Not after the story of its fall.
Well, we were here. And as the leader of this expedition it was my task to ensure our survival, even under the unexpected and absurd conditions we suddenly found ourselves in. I remembered the story of Battlefailed's fall and I immediately seized on its most salient point. Forgotten beasts from the depths and skeletal beasts from the Plains of Ooze. This place was crawling with death. There was only one safe place for a dwarf under such circumstances. "Strike the Earth!"
We each grabbed a single armload of supplies - I was sure risking a second trip would be suicide - and ran down the nearest flight of stairs. It was coated in a gray patina, a mixture of old blood and ichor and powders and other strange substances, but fortunately our sturdy shoes gave us purchase on the slippery surfaces. And even more fortunately, it kept us from getting any of it on our skins. Our pets and draft animals... not so lucky. By the time we reached the ground half of them were already laboring to breathe and bleeding out from every orifice. It was gruesome, but at least it was quick. None of them made it far.
Lesson one of Battlefailed; never ever touch anything. We checked our clothing to make sure no edges were flapping loose. Little did I realize at the time, but I would have to remain in the clothing I wore then for years to come.
Down at the ground level I spotted a pair of small tunnels carved into the sandy beachside cliff. These looked agricultural, which was exactly what we needed if we were going to hole up for a while until we could come up with a plan. Sure enough, inside were a pair of shallow chambers carved out of the soil. There were stone doors, but I knew that if Forgotten Beasts truly dogged our heels those would barely even slow it down. I ordered Nish Ismas, our stoneworker, to seal the entrances. He grabbed some rough gabbro that was lying nearby and quickly walled us in. I breathed a sigh of relief. Our quarters were a bit small but we had a copper pick, so we could dig out a quick expansion if need be. The important part was that we were safe enough to take the time to do so. The unknown monsters were sealed out. I went to take a quick stock of the resources we had available.
It was then that I saw the monster that we'd sealed in with us. A troll was lurking in the corner of one of the two rooms. When he finally roused himself I nearly had a heart attack; there was no way we could survive an attack from such a beast, we'd left our axes outside in the mad rush to get down here. But the troll was behaving strangely... it didn't lunge to attack, just sat quietly and regarded us with its beady black eyes. I couldn't imagine what it might be thinking - trolls were incomprehensible beasts at the best of times, and this one had somehow survived in the ruins of Battlefailed. Even monsters had monsters of their own. Who knew what horrors it had endured?
The impasse held for an excruciatingly long time, and then finally the troll grunted something that could almost be called a word. "Frrrrend."
Truly, the troll's mind was broken. It had no desire to attack us. And, not wanting to give it one, we let it sit in its corner undisturbed. And just to be on the safe side, I suggested that Nish take the gabbro mechanism that had fortuitously been lying in the dirt and build a cage trap in the corridor connecting the two earthen chambers. Should the troll snap a second time I hoped that this would be enough to contain it.
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While cautiously poking around in the troll's cave I discovered a flight of stairs leading down. The level below was almost as rough as the agricultural caves, but I could tell that this was no crude root cellar; our refuge was connected to Battlefailed directly. Or at least to Upper Battlefailed, which I recalled from the stories was somewhat separate from the more elaborate Lower Battlefailed. I had Nish seal off a few more access points and we claimed this third chamber as part of our "safe zone". Nish was a little panicked at this point, understandably, and in his haste he wound up walling himself up on the wrong side of one of the doors; a moment of tense hilarity there as we sorted that all out. But once he was done that we could finally relax a little. There was some wood lying around, enough for a few beds, and we excavated a little stone to make other furnishings with. And we started tidying up the old half-decayed skeletons that were lying everywhere. We put them with the Friendly Troll, hoping that they would keep him occupied if he decided he wanted a femur to chew on.
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With all of our immediate needs and threats dealt with it was time to start thinking about the future. As much as we all wanted to flee Battlefailed and its toxic sludge we also began to realize just what enormous wealth and opportunity lay under our feet. We called a meeting and voted. Battlefailed would be reclaimed. Shortly afterward, almost as if our decision had been heard somehow in the mountainhomes, a group of six fresh migrants arrived and scratched in piteous terror on our door. After confirming that they were dwarves and not monsters mimicking dwarven voices I had Nish briefly break down one of his walls to let them in. They had managed to become coated in ichor too, and none of their pets had made it far past the gates - it seemed that this poison was going to be our constant companion and shape the nature of the fort for some time to come. So be it.
Securing the surface facilities were out of the question for the time being, we didn't have the dwarfpower or the weapons to face whatever beings had doomed the first Battlefailed contingent. So the first order of business would be to drain and secure the chambers of Upper Battlefailed. After examining the lowermost chamber we had access to I soon discovered that a section of the floor was artificial, not carved directly out of native rock, and prying up the stones revealed a staircase. Below was a series of dank chambers running ankle-deep with water, with waist-deep water trapped behind doors in a small room filled with coffins. Stairs leading deeper still were present, but they were filled with swirling water too deep to explore. My first thought was to begin consideration of a pumping system. But the water down there was flowing, with a distinctive rushing sound thrumming through the floor and walls, and more importantly the water was fresh. It occurred to me that this water must be still coming in from an aquifer breach and draining off somewhere else. Pumps would barely put a dent in it; I had to get the source sealed off.
There was another patch of wall composed of artificial masonry, and breaking through revealed exactly what we needed to do. There was a large chamber beyond with a corridor that was gushing out water, which then swirled down a hole in the floor near the middle. Fortunately, after observing the flow for some minutes, I was able to see that it occasionally ebbed just barely low enough that it would be possible to seal the corridor with a watertight door. I had Tekkud dig us a new access passage (the old one that had been walled up had an impassible hole in the floor between the room and it - presumably how the dwarves of First Battlefailed had held back the flood long enough to get the wall constructed in the first place). Then I sent a brave dwarf in there to seal it off.
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The water surged slightly and he came back, reporting that it was too deep. I sighed, patiently explained that he should wait for one of the momentary ebbs to do his work, and sent him back in. He returned immediately and reported "still too deep".
I am a patient dwarf, but there are limits and as leader of this expedition I sometimes have to put my foot down. I had a second door constructed in Tekkud's tunnel into the chamber and the next time someone went in to take a look at sealing off the aquifer I had the door locked behind them. This was probably the most important task in the entire reclaimation process and I'd not see it interrupted. "Try again!" I called through the door.
"Too deep!"
"Try again!"
"Too deep!"
"Try again!"
"Too deep!"
"Try again!"
"Made a little progress... whoops, too deep!"
"Try again!"
"Too deep!"
"Try again!"
"Waugh!"
"Try again!"
...
"Try again! Hello?"
It seemed that the rushing water and treacherous footing had combined to flush the poor worker down that hole in the floor. Most unfortunate. Still, this was very important, and some progress had been made. I still had eleven more dwarves I could send in there. I called for another.
It was a long, tedious process. In the end only six dwarves were swept away. Before you call me a monster, however, it turns out that we didn't lose any of them. Three floors down, right next to where the hole in the floor deposited the clumsy-footed dwarves, was a doorway that had protected a chamber from the flood. True, the chamber was not a pleasant place - its architecture was eerily foreboding and it was filled with coffins - but they had each other to keep themselves company.
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I can just imagine how each new arrival was greeted by the others. "Ah, I see you got Door Duty after me, eh Urist?" "Yeah. I didn't finish, so make room. More probably coming."
Once the aquifer was properly sealed the water levels began to drop. The dwarves below, not wanting to wait any longer, took the door that had protected them off of its hinges and in one fell swoop much of the water gushed through their refuge and down the staircase still deeper. In short order the entirety of Upper Battlefailed was, if not dry, at least traversible. There was now plenty of room for us to move into.
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After a tentative exploration of the staircase that had served as Upper Battlefailed's drain we discovered that it went a long way down, all the way to the vast caverns below. At a level halfway between the surface and the caverns was a dense network of mineshafts carved through marble; I decided to use this space as a boneyard and to seal off any deeper passages for now. We had more than enough room for our current population and much work ahead of us in getting it back to liveable condition.
As the end of the year approached things were actually going quite well, all things considered. Mountainhome sent more migrants; I begin to wonder if they ever really cared whether Battlefailed was alive or not, and dread to think of how many may have died out there on the Plains of Ooze between Battlefailed's fall and resurrection. And then a trading caravan arrived, too. It was small, but we were short on food and rich in finished goods so that gave me the impetus I needed to begin the next step in my plan; secure the surface.
If there turned out to still be living Forgotten Beasts lurking around up there at least the caravan guards might keep them busy long enough for us to re-seal the place.
It turned out that there weren't. Securing the surface turned out to be almost anticlimactic after a year of cowering underground. The barrier walls were breached, a trade depot was built in a perfectly-sized niche in the sand that seemed to have been used for that purpose a long time ago, and I declared that all of the refuse within the walls of Surface Battlefailed were now fair game to be hauled into proper storage places.
Oh, and since we were unable to locate a lever that was clearly marked as operating Battlefailed's main drawbridge gate, I had a new lever constructed down in the room I'd claimed as the fort's administrative office. Here it is:
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Seems like an important thing to remember so I'm making a note of it here.
Oh, in the meantime, I sent a brave scout down the large spiral ramp we discovered. It seemed like a far more important passage downward than the simple staircase that had served as Upper Battlefailed's drain, and sure enough, it appears to lead directly down to Lower Battlefailed. Surprisingly, most of it appears to be muddy but otherwise dry; only isolated rooms are still full of water, most of which should be easy enough to reclaim simply by taking a door off its hinges. Still, we don't have enough dwarves to begin work down there yet, and who knows what dangers still lurk there. We'll stick to the surface and Upper Battlefailed for now.
Year 517
The first half of 517 was uneventful.
Yes, truly, half a year passed with no significant events to report. Oh, there was one; during the summer a kobold ambush squad snuck in through the main gates after we opened them to allow a trade caravan inside. They slipped adroitly past the traps, of course, but they weren't prepared for Battlefailed's real hazards; they weren't wearing shoes. Most of them didn't make it through the gatehouse before collapsing, their feet rotting and lungs mercifully paralyzed.
(http://oi54.tinypic.com/vqs9jb.jpg)
Not much of an ambush. Note to all denizens of Battlefailed; never ever take your shoes off. Ever.
But then an event we'd been fearing for our entire time here finally came to pass. Sama Ilethefotha, a huge noseless bull with three tails and curly lavender fur, was spotted just outside the fortress' walls. And it was moving fast! The gate was closed, but Battlefailed's surface fortifications have a fatal weakness - there are no seaward-facing defenses. The bull hopped in the ocean and easily swam around the end of the wall.
Fortunately we'd remained on a hair trigger, and by the time Sama got into Battlefailed we'd retreated back underground and sealed off the doors with masonry again. We could hear the sounds of Sama's rampage through even that, though. It went up the stairs of the central structure of Battlefailed, smashing doors and screw pumps as it went, and then when it reached the top it tore down the windmills and gears that had powered them. No great loss, really. The pumps had been part of a system called FAILCANNON that the previous denizens of Battlefailed had apparently depended on as an "ultimate weapon" for defense, but it was really just an oversized water sprinkler. The enormous skull sculpture mounted on its overhanging tip seemed far more useful.
And then, seemingly satisfied with the "terrible blow" it had wrought against the defenses of Battlefailed, Sama sat down and waited smugly in its lofty perch. Perhaps it was expecting us to come rushing out in a rage so that it could slaughter us.
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We resumed reclamation work below, ignoring the beast. We now had plenty of food and plenty of farming space to get more. I was willing to let the next caravan's guards test their mettle against Sama.
A group of migrants arrived first. I was faced with a dilemma. Leave them up there to die? Or open the gates, breach the masonry plug, and hope they could run past Sama without the creature seeing them from its vantage point on the roof? If Sama got inside it would likely doom Battlefailed again, since we had no military of any kind to even attempt to challenge it (assigning a dwarf to military duty would result in that dwarf trying to change clothing, which would result in near-instant death). But I hadn't lost a single dwarf yet in the course of reclaiming Battlefailed, and more dwarfpower to haul Battlefailed's garbage was always in highest demand, so I decided to risk it.
Almost all of them made it. The last stragglers were spotted, however, and Sama roared down from his perch to tear them limb from limb. It spat terrible poison (the same lung-paralyzing stuff that was already spread everywhere), killing at great range. I ordered the masons to re-plug the door but they didn't make it in time; Sama burst inside, into the southern tree farm chamber that had served as our own first refuge. There was much screaming and running as my dwarves fell back, and although I designated a whole series of masonry plugs throughout the fort in hopes of saving at least someone it seemed like Sama was moving just too damned fast. It charged toward the northern tree farm chamber, headed for the main staircase that threaded through most of Upper Battlefailed.
The friendly troll who'd spent almost two years crouched quietly in the corner looked up sharply at the commotion. "Frrrrend?" It grunted at the dwarves running past, just as it always did. We'd almost forgotten about him at this point, in fact - we largely just ignored the poor broken-minded thing. Then Sama burst in on their heels, snorting noselessly and spitting its venom. The troll's eyes lit with a terrible fire. "NOT FREND!" The troll roared, surging to its feet and charging.
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The troll was mercilessly slaughtered. But miraculously, its heroism did save Battlefailed. In the course of its futile struggle, it seems that a small quantity of the vile poison Sama spewed all over it somehow got smeared onto Sama itself. And, like the proverbial scorpion, Sama was not immune. The beast was paralyzed, and soon died.
That poison is nasty stuff. Never ever take your shoes off. Sadly, nobody ever found out the troll's name - if such creatures actually have names - so its passing will go unmemorialized. Except by this journal, and by the fact that Battlefailed still stands.
As we tentatively slunk back up to the surface, the terror of our close call still fresh in our minds, we were immediately beset by a new threat. A goblin ambush party had followed the migrants inside (seems I was none too soon in opening the gates for them!). The goblins wore boots, thus thwarting Battlefailed's toxic defenses, but when they too entered via the old tree farm chamber we were able to lock the doors at both ends and trap them in there with Sama and the troll's corpses.
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That gave us time to build enough cage traps to contain them all, after which I unlocked the door and let them back out into said cage traps.
Crisis over. Whew.
Certainly, we were very fortunate in how these events played out. In the end only two of the migrants died and Sama was defeated more by its own lethality than anything else. But it gave us all a dose of confidence, and also a shot of urgency; we were ready to finish claiming the rest of Battlefailed and seal it off from the rest of these horrors. I ordered the large spiral ramp unsealed and began moving us all down into Lower Battlefailed.
Year 518
After all the time we spent squatting in the relatively small and barren ruins of Upper Battlefailed, Lower Battlefailed is an awe-inspiring place. The large size and confusing layout make it easy to get lost in the many chambers down here, and there are so many nooks and crannies to explore that it's hard to tell what to do with it all. And Armok, is there a lot of junk lying around! Fortunately many of the coffins already built into the alcoves lining the grand ramp leading down here were unoccupied, so the first order of business - clearing the honored dead - went pretty quickly. The rest of the cleanup is going to be a years-long tedious task.
Most of the bedchambers in the two apartment stacks were unflooded, I've designated them all for individual use. Everyone in Battlefailed has their own room. The legendary dining hall was only missing a few tables and chairs, easily filled from what was already lying around. The enormous room at the lower end of the spiral ramp made for an excellent stockpile space to gather and sort Battlefailed's goods.
All is not entirely without obstacle, however. Below the enormous chamber's level, the spiral ramp descends to levels still filled with water. The records we've recovered indicate that Battlefailed's magma forges are down there, as well as much of the fort's metals and other riches, but draining it won't be as easy as just dismounting a few doors or digging a hole through a wall. We'll need to use screw pumps for this one. But also down there are no less than three Forgotten Beasts, lurking in a water-filled side tunnel partway down the flooded section of the ramp. I'm certain that any attempt to drain the ramp will disturb them, so I'm reluctantly putting off this final stage of reclamation for another day and instead have had the flooded part of the ramp walled off.
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In the meantime I have begun to give some thought to the question of how to deal with the poison that pervades Battlefailed. This is a challenge I've never heard a good solution for, at least not for dealing with a situation of this scale. My plan, ultimately, is twofold:
1 - once the fort's goods have been sorted into stockpiles, allow a large portion of the fort's population to go idle. This should give time for cleaning tasks to be undertaken.
2 - dig a series of "cleaning troughs" across the busiest thoroughfares to ensure that contaminants aren't tracked back into cleaned areas.
I have already established the first cleaning troughs at what seems to be the central nexus of traffic in Battlefailed right now, the base of the spiral ramp where it enters the giant chamber I'm using for stockpiling. The following diagram shows this:
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Each cleaning trough contains 3/7 water, deposited via bucket brigade. Over top is a retractable bridge, just in case the troughs need to be sealed off for whatever reason. Dwarves path through the troughs just fine at that depth. Even though the troughs quickly became a mire of the most disgusting stuff imaginable, whenever a dwarf passes through one he comes out with nothing but a coating of clean, pure water covering him. Amazing.
I'll put a trough at the entrance to the dining hall, too. Perhaps once all the armor littering the fort has been gathered in one place I'll be able to put one at the entrance to that stockpile's chamber and dwarves will be able to safely suit up for military duty. We'll have to see how things go, if most of Battlefailed can be cleaned up it may not be necessary to worry about it.
I must make a note to buy some cats from traders at the next opportunity and see if I can chain up a breeding pair someplace clean. Having kittens wandering the hallways will be a good way of identifying patches of paralytic poison that still need to be taken care of. We're a completely pet-free fort at the moment but I'm actually starting to miss the wretched things. They're a good emergency source of meat, if nothing else.
Not that we'll need it. A somewhat disturbing fact I have learned is that a butcher can recover a usable amount of fat even from a years-old skeleton. Our food stockpiles are overflowing with masterful tallow-based roasts made from the remains of the animals that perished in Battlefailed's fall. As long as you don't think too hard about that, the taste is fantastic...
Year 519
The surface fort is pretty much cleaned up now. We haven't made much progress in cleaning up the stuff littering the landscape outside, though. Goblins remain as the one really serious threat we still haven't got a handle on thanks to our complete lack of military. Several caravans and migrant waves have fallen victim to them out there; we've had no choice but to keep the main gate sealed and watch helplessly as they were slaughtered. In the lulls between ambushes we've managed to at least recover the corpses. Old Battlefailed's coffins are now all occupied, so I had the cages and ropes removed from what seemed to be either a zoo or prison and have turned that into a new catacomb.
Old Battlefailed has been completely drained now except for the magma forges. I had to have some drainage tunnels dug underneath the northern block of apartments; the "living pod" design is an efficient one but the stairwells are vulnerable to getting blocked off by standing water. I considered rushing the drainage of the magma forge chamber when one of our weaponsmiths, Stukos Zatamzuntor, fell into a fey mood and wouldn't accept a regular forge to work at. But I doubted we could have done it safely or in time so I had a small and temporary magma forge dug out beside the old one for now. He produced an artifact steel crossbow and then I had him get to work forging silver warhammers and steel axes for the day when it's safe to change our shoes.
Shortly afterward Stukos was caught on the surface by two goblin ambush parties. I sadly wrote him off as doomed the moment I heard word, and ordered the gates shut. But it seems Stukos was a hunter before he became a weaponsmith, and he was still carrying his old bronze crossbow and silver bolts (no wonder he crafted a crossbow - the dwarf knows his ranged weapons!). With a combination of bolts and bludgeoning, Stukos actually managed to send both ambush parties fleeing with several kills to his name. Mark well the name of Stukos - I'm sure this dwarf is destined for greatness.
Now that I had such a legendary metalworker in Battlefailed and the time pressure of his mood was passed, I decided to make the attempt at draining the magma forge chamber. The pumps were put in place and a narrow slit was carved into the chamber from the side, too small for Forgotten Beasts to come through if the disturbance caused them to come down there. Indeed, once the pumping started, one did - a towering fire-breathing pterosaur named Fetho. The beast went absolutely nuts, in fact, running back and forth throughout the sealed-off section of the spiral ramp frantically searching for something to kill.
Battlefailed's luck with Forgotten Beasts remained solid, however. Fetho ultimately came to rest in a chamber some distance away from the spiral ramp, whose purpose is unclear. It is a five-by-five chamber, two levels tall, with four pillars supporting the roof. It lies directly underneath the arena. Once it seemed to have settled down there, I cautiously ordered the spiral ramp unsealed and then had a mason run down to wall Fetho up in its new abode. Once that was done I had the tunnel that Fetho had entered the spiral ramp through walled off as well, leaving the magma forge chamber completely secure. As soon as the water level was down to 4/7 I gave my dwarves the go-ahead to begin sorting through the items down there.
Such treasure! It seemed that much of the fort's loose items had been washed down there, to the lowest point in the fort, as the flood waters had drained away. There were also many, many skeletons. As my stout dwarves waded around waist-deep in the filthy, cluttered water, the skeletons tangled their feet and threatened to drown them. I told them to stop being such ninnies. Skeletons are harmless-
HOLY ARMOK! One of the skeletons, a huge muskox that looked no different from the rest of the charnal pit's denizens, rose up from the water under its own power and struck down several of my dwarves. Half of the fort's population must have been down there in that mess, the panic was indescribable. But fortunately with that many dwarves packed together against just a single beast of modest size, no matter how unnatural, the battle was brief. The muskox was torn apart and settled back into the muck to rest.
Needless to say, I had several additional butchers' shops constructed to speed up the processing of skeletons. Best to get them all safely dismantled before another incident like this occurred.
Once the room was cleared, I set about restoring the magma workshops themselves. A new magma channel had to be dug, the old one had of course been quenched by the water. The new forge seemed to inspire another of my weaponsmiths, who claimed the workshop and constructed... another artifact steel crossbow. Let it be known that the legendary weaponsmith Zefon Tunomiltast is a copycat, and not nearly as cool as Stukos! Though of course it is always good to have backup talent.
Also during this year, no less than three new Forgotten Beasts showed up in the undercaverns and made an attempt to invade Battlefailed. A crocodile-beast, a lobster-beast, and a giant tick-beast. All three of them never made it out of the old central staircase - they all stumbled to a halt, paralyzed on rotting feet, and then slowly bled to death from every orifice. I begin to wonder if perhaps we shouldn't clean up all of this poison... though I fear the day a beast composed of nonliving matter tries to come in via that route. I've ordered hatches constructed to seal off this entrance when needed.
In related news, we had a lot of kobold ambushes show up this year, all of them with bows. The solution to their annoying sniping of dwarves on Battlefailed's walls was to open the front gate and let them in. There were no survivors (a handful managed to get back out of the gates again but they all bled to death or asphyxiated within a few steps).
In the last months of 519 I noted that the cleanup of items within Battlefailed is nearly complete. There is a woeful lack of bins here and I've been having our carpenters churn them out as fast as they can, and now most of the hauling activity consists of packing already-salvaged stuff into the new bins. So I launched the first major foray outside of the walls of Battlefailed, claiming a swath of the stuff and marking it all to be dumped right inside the gates. I estimate that we got about one third of the stuff inside before a goblin siege arrived and I had the gates sealed once more. We have just shy of 100 dwarves to our number, so it should be just a few more months to sort and store that salvage.
It seems that Battlefailed's business is well in hand.
Going to have to do 520 in two parts. This is an eventful year! Also I spent the first half under siege by 100 goblins which seems to have made my FPS suffer a little bit. Unfortunately I may or may not get much time to play tomorrow, don't know for sure.
Year 520 - Spring
It has been several months since my last entry and it's dawning on me that we can't continue with business as usual any more. True, business as usual is going fine right at this very moment - the goblin siege is helpless against us, binning of finished goods is still proceeding at a breakneck pace, and the bank of magma smelters I ordered constructed are burning three shifts a day smelting the ore that was left littering the halls. But that goblin siege isn't going anywhere this time and more migrants and trade caravans are no doubt on their way. It's time to get a little more proactive.
Perhaps also came a sign from Armok. Logem Rodimrovod developed the aspect of one fey the other day, and after claiming a bowyer's workshop that I didn't even know we had proceeded to turn out our third artifact crossbow - this one in the medium of black-cap wood.
We still dare not wear armor, the mere act of changing into it is more dangerous than any attack it may deflect. And so I have ordered a set of bronze crossbows to be forged and designated a squad of dwarves to wield them. I have told them on no uncertain terms that they are not to change any other part of their uniforms; just pick up a crossbow, a quiver and some bolts, and get to training. I appointed Stukos as captain of the guard and assigned him to wield his own artifact crossbow.
Battlefailed appears to have been left with no identifiable barracks or archery ranges to reclaim. I have decided to repurpose the ruins of FAILCANNON. The "sprinkler head" looks like it could actually serve as a decent station for a squad of crossbowdwarves to rain bolts down on invaders, and the "barrel" of the structure will make a fine pair of archery ranges to keep the squad nearby while training.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/2m5i59g.jpg)
I will no doubt be called a philistine for desecrating the purpose of this noble construction, but frankly, I think it will kill far more goblins this way. Not to mention that the pump stacks and power systems would need a complete rebuild to use it for its original purpose. Perhaps someday.
No sooner had I set up a schedule for our military then I received reports of yet another new Forgotten Beast arriving in the deepest depths. Perhaps Armok wanted to test our new military, but if so I figured Armok would be disappointed this time. "It has blood, yes? It breathes?" I asked the messenger. He nodded and I nodded back; no need to lock the hatch in that case, or disturb the military. I made my way down to Lower Battlefailed to watch this new creature die.
It was a great three-eyed bat named Lased, with a broad horn and short golden hair. Exactly as expected, it flew toward the staircase of death... "Oh, Armok." In a flash I realized my hubris. Battlefailed meant death for any living thing that set foot within it, but this creature was not setting foot as it came. "Lock the hatch! Lock the hatch!" I hollered as I ran the rest of the way to the mineshaft boneyards where I had ordered the hatch installed. The hatch was there alright, resting open on the stairwell, but it appeared to have never actually been mounted in its frame. Pinned next to it was a small piece of parchment with the words "To do - Melbil". It had clearly been pinned there a long time ago, probably right after I'd given the construction order.
"To arms! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!" I admit to no small amount of panic at this point. Everything had been going so well. Was this how it was going to end? Surely, though, a squad of crossbowdwarves would be able to hold off this one beast - they just had to get one bolt into one of its wings, make it falter and touch the ground, and everything would be fine. The staircase was long. They just had to get here in time.
The bat's shriek echoed as it came barrelling up it toward me. Where was the guard? Ah! A marksdwarf came running around the corner, dodging the fleeing civilians crammed in the narrow corridor. "Olin! Good man! Quick, put a couple of bolts in that... uh... where's your crossbow?"
"Haven't had time to pick it up yet sir," Olin Dorentost panted. "Or bolts. But look, I've got a quiver! And a backpack with two square meals, and a full waterskin, if you need me to go on a lengthy patrol. I'm prepared."
"... good. Chap with the wings, there. Go get him." I had passed beyond panic into an interesting sort of dream state. Surely this couldn't all be my fault, could it? What had I done wrong? All of my orders had been perfectly clear and reasonable.
To her credit Olin didn't hesitate. She ran down the stairs to meet the monster, which had paused to demolish the old half-completed pump stack that had been built along part of the staircase for some now-forgotten purpose, and lunged to the attack. It was incredible! Olin was completely unarmed and unarmored, but she flung herself on the beast and began pummelling it with her fists. The creature was so taken aback that it didn't even try to counterstrike.
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/11kgi8x.jpg)
Was Olin really going to pull this off?
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/11lufkp.jpg)
Oh.
As Lased tossed the battered body of brave Olin down one of the ruined pump stack's open shafts my brief moment of hope fell with her. I began pondering what other last-second defenses I could order constructed. But it was probably too late. If Lased made it up to the boneyards, past that useless half-constructed hatch, there were many directions he could go from there - they couldn't all be sealed, not in the brief seconds we had left. My hundred dwarves were going to die. Perhaps I could find a place to hole up with a few survivors, to start over yet again and reclaim Battlefailed a second time... but would it not be more humane to let it end for good?
Then a miracle happened. Just as Armok tests us, so to he inspires us.
Olin had only fallen one floor, coming to rest on a ledge immediately below. Ignoring her grievous injuries she crawled back up the filthy staircase beside her, adding to the thick layer of toxic grime that already clung to her worn clothing. Lased was clearly as shocked as I was and the creature hesitated long enough for her to scream out one word before she struck again: "Blood!"
(http://oi52.tinypic.com/2rwn5vc.jpg)
Lased tasted Battlefield's blood.
Needless to say, I called for every medic in the fort to halt all other activities and take Olin to the hospital. Chief medical dwarf Zaneg personally came down to recover her. Sadly it looks like from the state of Olin's foot she'll not be walking again any time soon, so I later had to replace her in her squad with a new recruit. Other marksdwarves arrived and set about beating ineffectually on Lased's immobile body with their crossbows - did nobody have bolts yet? - and eventually it succumbed, but let it be known that the kill rightly belongs to Olin.
Once the immediate aftermath was being dealt with I went back to my office and sat down heavily at my desk. The close call had shaken me. I thought I had prepared for this eventuality... "Melbil." I methodically rifled through my records. "Melbil Lumashasan - construct stone hatch cover." I raised my voice. "Bring him!" One of the newly-minted guardsmen, Kib Uzoldakost, headed out and in short order the craftsdwarf was standing before my desk. "Why did you not complete this work order?" I asked.
"Uh..." The dwarf thought back. "Ah yeah. There was a stack of elk bones in the way."
"Well, yes, the hatch was in the boneyards. I specifically remember de-designating the staircase as part of the boneyards when I ordered the hatch built. Why didn't you move the bones out of the way?"
Melbil shook his head. "That wasn't my job. I figured I'd be told to try mounting the hatch again once it was done."
"Ah, I see. Thank you." Melbil walked out of the office and I turned to the guard who had brought him. "We all do our jobs here, right?"
The guard gave me a grave nod of acknowledgement and followed Melbil out the door.
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/jac9lh.jpg)
A second goblin siege force showed up a few days later, reinforcing the existing goblin army still present (100 goblins total, plus two dozen trolls), but my confidence had cautiously returned. Their numbers didn't matter; none of them could get through Battlefailed's walls unless we allowed them through. My dwarves were safe from that threat at least.
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/n49j86.jpg)
What?? I immediately rush to the scene of the report - Kivish's own bedroom. How could any enemy have managed to get in here? Where were they? Kogsak stood alertly in the room next to Kivish's bed, where his corpse lay, wielding a blood-soaked crossbow. I blinked in shock, even more stunned as I realized what had really happened. Kogsak didn't seem at all deranged or angry. "Why?"
"Doin' my job, sir,"
"Please elaborate."
"Oh. Well, you remember how Mayor Fikod put in an order for native silver items?"
I wracked my brains. "That was years ago. It was a foolish request, we barely had food to go around at the time."
"Yeah, well, Kivish here was supposed to do it anyway, and he didn't. So the mayor sentanced him to a couple months in the clink. But we didn't have none, and so I figured why not just rough 'im up a bit instead? It's all over and done with then."
I looked again at Kivish's corpse. Kogsak had smashed the dwarf's skull, completely shattered it, and I was pretty sure I could see brain matter leaking from the wound. I guess it was apt that I'd ordered the cages replaced with coffins in Battlefailed's old prison, Kivish was going to the same place now either way. "I'd better order up some chains," I sighed and walked out. I couldn't exactly complain considering the example I'd set with Melbil.
Year 520 - Summer
The summer progressed fairly normally after that. I considered trying to lure the goblins in closer to the fort so that my marksdwarves could get a little target practice in on live targets, but one thing worries me - out among the goblins is a single solitary one who carries a bow. An extremely high-quality bow, in fact. Her description matches that of a legendary elite bowgoblin named Em Uspungamxu, and I'm betting she's a good enough shot that she'd be able to get some arrows through our fortifications if it came to a sniping match. I don't want to lose any more dwarves right now. So, I've ordered the construction of another contingency; a number of ballistae. Their field of fire should cover the region that she's currently in, and their fortifications will have drawbridges built behind them to allow them to be sealed off and maintained safely if the goblins get closer. We have enough ballista parts already in stock from old Battlefailed, but we have no ammo so it'll take a little while to get this set up. Good to be prepared though.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/2m2ghgh.jpg)
I also had several more cleaning troughs installed, including one in front of a small disused room that appears to be completely uncontaminated. This will be the "breeding chambers", should I manage to acquire a breeding pair of any sort of animal. Once the cleaning trough was installed I had several ropes put in (making sure that they got dragged through the cleaning trough on the way in, just in case they were themselves contaminated). I believe that we may actually be making progress; only a couple of dwarves were involved with installing the ropes but afterward the trough's water was still completely clean. A trough I had installed in the entryway to the apartment complex is likewise at least partially clean, despite a large number of dwarves travelling through it.
I have discovered that we actually have a caged male warthog and a caged male donkey in inventory, apparently recovered from one of the destroyed caravans during our recent foray out of the fort before this siege began. I've ordered the warthog roped up to test the safety of the breeding area. It seems to actually be surviving!
(http://oi54.tinypic.com/14sd4zp.jpg)
I've also installed a cleaning trough in a small detour of the main stairway going through the boneyard. It's high enough up that any creature that gets there is probably not vulnerable to the stairway's poison anyway (or if it is it's a flyer like the Lased and will need to be tackled by a toxic dwarf - a tactic I've decided to call "trolling").
As the summer came to a close, a happy event occurred! Heroic Olin, who I had expected would remain bedridden for life and accomplish no more great feats, got a fey glint in her eye and struggled out of the hospital to claim a clothier's shop. I half expected her to somehow manage to make a crossbow out of cloth, but instead she made a silk shirt of the highest quality.
This was balanced by a sad event. The dwarven baby, Rovod Raberkeskel, grew large enough that her mother Meng put him down. I immediately designated a safe zone encompassing Rovod and Meng's rooms, the dining hall, and a food stockpile and associated kitchens. Close examination shows no signs of contamination here. Meng was reassigned to cooking and brewing duties in the hopes that Rovod would not stray far from her mother. If only there were some way I could have the child chained up next to the warthog! But no, a child does as it pleases.
Rovod walked on her own from 14th Galena until her death on 17th Galena when she bled out. I have been unable to locate the source of the contaminant that killed her. I do think the situation is improving, though - the cleaning troughs are blue most of the time now, not sickly gray. Here's hoping the next one lasts longer.
Then a happy event occurred! The hundred goblins camped outside gave up on their siege and departed. The ballistae will be ready for next time, at least. I heard reports of items being stolen shortly after the siege left, so I ordered the main gate opened. Sure enough, kobold corpses began appearing in the gatehouse.
Then a gigantic one-eyed wasp named Idgag emerged on the first cavern level. It located a way into the spiral ramp that had been overlooked until now, a small underwater opening that had been used as a source of water to fill a large cubical reservoir. Fortunately Idgag merely sat in this opening and waited, allowing us time to wall it off. I do not pretend to understand the minds of these creatures.
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/i5su8p.jpg)
And that was Summer.
!!Science!! is performed in this update, resulting in the discovery of a practical means of weaponizing Forgotten Beast extract. I'd intended to upload some saves, too, but it's way late and I'm tired. I'll do that tomorrow probably.
Year 520 - Autumn
The first excitement of Autumn came in the form of another gigantic insect from the deeps, this time a thing named Aci that resembled a giant rove beetle. This beast was yet another that was capable of flight and so I ordered marksdwarves to report to the boneyard with a certain sense of dread. The hatch was now complete and could be locked in the event of catastrophe, but catastrophe would likely mean the loss of my best (and only) warriors.
As we peered down the long staircase, however, it seemed there was someone else who'd be facing trouble first. A miller named Tholtig Shedimashrir was running up the stairs just ahead of Aci, hauling a load of native silver ore that was presumably destined for the smelters. I was amazed at how fast he was able to move with that load and even more amazed that he refused to drop it. Unfortunately Aci was much faster. It caught up with Tholtig as they passed through the second cavern layer, where the now-empty pump stack shafts were exposed to open air and Aci could fly freely. The giant beetle dove at Tholtig.
Tholtig dodged, causing Aci to slam into the wall next to him and fall to the ground. This was all that was needed to coat the beast in Battlefailed's special blend of poison, Unfortunately, as fast acting as the poison normally was, it wasn't fast enough to save Tholtig; Aci recovered almost instantly from the impact and snatched him up by the torso with its mandibles. I've seen many horrible deaths in my time here but this was one of the most brutal; Aci injected its own flavor of venom into Tholtig's helplessly twitching body and then threw him forcefully down the stairs with one wing, dashing his body apart on impact. There was never any real chance of us intervening. Now that Aci had been successfully trolled and there were no survivors to evacuate I ordered the hatch locked and waited for Aci to perish.
The beast showed no signs of going down easily. Aci's movement became sluggish but it did not become paralyzed; instead it launched itself into the air and started careening wildly around the second cavern layer, dripping a cascade of ichor from its joints as it went. The beast's head and thorax seemed to be especially damaged, perhaps from its direct contact with Tholtig, and its right wing (with which it had tossed the hapless dwarf) was rotting so badly that the stench was almost visible. Every time the beast crashed to the ground or into the lake below I expected it to finally succumb.
But it didn't. Instead it eventually came to a rest perched on the side of the natural pillar that the staircase ran through, the flow of ichor ceased, and Aci survived. Its head and thorax were broken, its wing rotted, but its condition appeared to stabilize and its lesser wounds healed.
Absolutely amazing. The constitution that creature must have is incredible. Fortunately for us Aci appeared to have at least been permanently crippled by its experience; though still alive it seems to show no signs of moving from where it has come to rest.
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/2yjww7b.jpg)
While all this was going on Uker, a shrimp beast, appeared. It got paralyzed when it entered the now-abandoned magma forge drainage system and the dwarves working the forges got to watch it slowly die though the fortification in the wall, rotting from the feet up.
Meng gave birth to a new baby girl. Here's hoping she'll be able to grow up where her sister did not.
A caravan from the Mountainhome arrived. It was followed by a kobold ambush party that resulted in the following adorable scene:
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/1zfk651.jpg)
Five kobold ambushers, each becoming paralyzed and collapsing exactly on top of each other as they passed through the gatehouse.
Year 520 - Winter
Winter was fairly uneventful. A blue wolf-beast appeared in the second cavern layer, but since that layer was sealed off when Idgag came poking around it just wandered aimlessly. A lizard-creature similarly joined the herd in the first cavern layer.
Most significantly, a serendipitous accident occurred near the end of winter. I had ordered a breeding pair of donkeys to be tied up in the "clean room". Two donkey cages had been moved there beforehand so that they would never be removed from containment outside of that controlled environment, but apparently the animal handler I assigned to the task wasn't entirely clear on the purpose of the exercise. He ignored the cage adjacent to the rope and decided I must have meant for him to tie up one of the donkeys still stored in the animal stockpile on the other side of Lower Battlefailed. I quickly received word of the donkey's death and rushed to see what had happened.
The trail of donkey blood made it fairly obvious. The animal handler had dragged the donkey through the dining hall on his way to the clean room and the donkey had begun bleeding only a few steps beyond the dining hall's cleaning trough, which was at that time filled with contaminant-laden water. My previous observations had suggested that passing through a contaminated cleaning trough should have been safe even for unprotected creatures; at no time did they ever have contaminant on their skins, only a coating of pure water. But this was a highly suggestive result! I must do more science to these donkeys...
Year 521 - Spring
Surprise! The siege is back. There was just enough time to call all the garbage-collectors inside, but in the confusion nobody was able to get to the lever to close the front gate. Fortunately, I've been passing the time trying to clear up some of the weapon clutter by building traps in the gatehouse. The first three rows consist of nothing but bows and arrows, then there's a row of conventional melee weapon traps, then the old cage traps left over from Old Battlefailed.
The elite goblin lasher leading the first squad of goblins through the gate dodged his way through the weapon traps in an amazing feat of agility but landed in a cage trap. His troops followed and were completely pincushioned. One wounded goblin that managed to flee had five arrows stuck in various parts of his body! The next troop to make it to the gatehouse suffered exactly the same fate - the elite leader was caged, the followers were routed. A contingent of trolls was next and they managed to barge on through, overwhelming both cage and weapon traps, but the siege was already broken at that point and the goblins fled. I suppose they were expecting another long and boring waiting game like last time. The trolls that got inside were dispatched by the crossbowdwarves.
Having beaten back the siege so quickly this year, I decide to go for broke and designate every remaining item outside of Battlefailed's walls to be moved to a dump site right inside the gates. Operation: Spring Cleaning is a success, after months of hard hauling effort the exterior surface of Battlefailed is clear!
(http://oi52.tinypic.com/1671pus.jpg)
Year 521 - Summer
Another of our weaponsmiths developed a fey mood. This time the product was an artifact platinum mace. Perhaps for the best; having _four_ artifact crossbows would have been a bit much!
Now that all of the junk from outside the fort is secured inside, there's time for a few smaller projects.
1 - Experimenting with cleaning troughs. The most recent dwarven caravan brought two mules, which are useless for breeding. I have had their cages placed in the clean room. The trough leading into the clean room has poison in the water, and I will install clean grates over it. The door on the lower level is pet-impassible. I will release one of the mules and allow it to cross down into the lower chamber, which as near as I can tell from examining it is completely clean. If the mule survives unscathed for a while, I will open the grates and allow it to pass through the poisoned water. We'll see how it does.
2 - There are three rooms in upper Battlefailed that are still flooded, immediately adjacent to the ocean. I will build a windmill-powered pump and attempt to get them drained and sealed as well.
(http://oi54.tinypic.com/14v606v.jpg)
3 - Spring Cleaning Part II. We have in inventory: 101 crutches, 22 wooden short swords, 25 wooden spears, 28 wooden long swords, 37 suits of wooden armor, 63 wooden and bone leggings/greaves... I have stopped counting specifically. There are over 2200 articles of armor, 1300 articles of legwear, 1500 articles of headwear, 2300 articles of handwear, 2600 articles of footwear. Much of these items are extremely poor quality articles recovered from invaders or hapless caravans. Half of our 250 shields are made of wood. There are 168 buckets. We have 23 barrels of Gnomeblight and I can say with great confidence that the last thing Battlefailed needs to worry about is a gnome infestation. This is all a vast, useless waste of storage space. No wonder it has taken so long to get everything inside!
I'm going to order that much of this mountain of junk be dumped into a spare magma aperture down in the forges, making allowances to spare items of particular artistic merit. That should take a little while but if I need dwarfpower for other tasks I'll order a portion of the fort to stop hauling refuse.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/vctkrt.jpg)
A giant serpent with noxious secretions arrived in the third cavern layer. It died before reaching the staircase.
Results of the cleaning trough experiments:
I just recieved an unexpected notification that a cat had suffocated. Checking up on the situation, I find that my attempt to rope up several cats for breeding in the clean room has gone awry; although their cages were placed right next to the ropes I'd ordered them tied to, cats are slippery beasts and managed to escape the fumble-fingered dwarf I had assigned to the task. One was dead in the hallway just outside the safe zone, but I saw that the other one was still splashing through the trough (which had not yet been sealed with grating). I locked the door to prevent it from escaping and observed.
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(http://oi52.tinypic.com/35n7us1.jpg)
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/2w4wc5s.jpg)
Although the cat's body parts were listed as being coated only in water, the cat quickly went limp and began to gasp and mew piteously as it rotted from the paws upward. This, then, confirms the cause of Rovod's death; the child passed through a cleaning trough on her way to her bedroom.
Should Battlefailed fall again and a future reclaim party find these notes, take heed. Cleaning troughs will clean dwarves and the items that they carry with them, but they will _not_ protect a vulnerable dwarf passing through one even though the dip is brief and doesn't appear to get anything other than water onto their skins.
Next I confirmed this finding by finishing the grating and releasing a mule as planned. The dwarf that released the mule had contaminants on his mittens and shoes, since he didn't pass through the cleaning trough now that the grates are in place, but the released mule remained standing in place for a long time after being released with no sign of syndromes. Animals exposed to these contaminants are usually paralyzed perish within a matter of moments. Eventually the mule went downstairs, over the grate covering the corpse of the cat, and came to a stop against the door (which was tightly sealed). It appears uncontaminated. I will leave it until autumn and check up on it again then unless I receive word of further developments in the meantime.
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/sep1f9.jpg)
Oh dear. Deler picked the worst possible place to learn how to walk, all the way up on the surface and far from the "safe zone" I have been preparing down in Lower Battlefailed. I tried assigning him and his mother to it (the Thob mentioned in this log) but he stepped in a pool of toxin mere moments after entering the spiral ramp downward. Quite tragic, this would have been an ideal moment to test whether covering over those cleaning troughs was sufficient to render it truly safe.
On the plus side, the mule is still alive as of the end of summer. I'll unlock the zoo now and allow it to wander to the dining hall in autumn; it should follow roughly the same route that killed the donkey that was dragged through the cleaning trough (which is now covered with grates).
Seem to be in a slightly boring stretch now, no threats have pressed Battlefailed's defenses of late. Next year may see more - I will do the first attempt at Operation Changing Shoes then, which could lead to an actual proper armor-clad military force. Which will inevitably lead to Operation Retake The Caverns, which could be... messy.
I'll get some savegames posted later tonight for anyone who wants to take a tour of what I've uncovered so far. Except for that mysterious water-filled staircase, of course. I'll find out what secrets it holds next time. :)
Year 521
The past year has been a relatively uneventful one, with much that progressed entirely according to plan and therefore little that bears recording herein.
There was a brief period of excitement and anticipation as I put into motion the equipment to drain the last three flooded chambers of Upper Battlefailed. What treasures remained undisturbed under the fetid blue ocean waters down there? According to the records I had uncovered, those chambers were flooded well before Battlefailed finally fell - they could contain lost relics of that earlier time. As the pumps drained the uppermost of the three rooms we found only more of the usual carnage - a tangle of old skeletons, woven together by sea life and surging waves into a gruesome mat covering the floor. There were a few Forgotten Beast skeletons among them, which suggested to me that this place had been a deliberate dumping ground. Wonderful - we'd found one of old Battlefailed's garbage middens.
But there were chambers below that one that looked more promising. After the holes in the seaside wall were sealed, a new pump was built and a hole punctured in the floor. Now that we no longer had to contend with a constant inflow of sea water the draining went much more quickly. Aha! A chamber containing statuary!
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/90n5z5.jpg)
Oh.
Well, a disappointment to be sure, but at least we opened up a bit more sorely needed storage space. We filled these rooms with garbage too.
Speaking of garbage, I suspended Operation Spring Cleaning II after just a few months. It was painfully obvious that as quick as it had been gathering up all the trash from outside the fort, hauling it all down piece by piece to the magma chamber far below was going to take far too long. I had to come up with a more efficient alternative.
I considered building a compactor on the surface, near the current location of the heap of trash, to crush the junk into a more manageable state. But that didn't seem a suitable fate for such rubbish. I wanted it to burn. Retreating to Lower Battlefailed, I went alone to the richly-engraved throne room to study the maps that we had pieced together of the geology of this place. For hours I overlaid them, compared their scales and carefully aligned them top to bottom. At last I had found the perfect spot. I summoned our chief miner, Tekkud.
"There," I pointed to a spot a short distance beyond the end of a mined-out limonite vein that ran just under the ocean's floor. "Exactly there. I want you to gather a mining team and sink a shaft."
"How far down?" Tekkud asked dubiously. I could tell he didn't like the thought of digging so close to a source of water; I expected him to complain every step of the way until he got back down into the drier depths where the ceiling wouldn't drip so ominously. It would be tedious cajoling him to continue.
"All the way down." I flipped through the maps. "This one spot passes directly down through a column of rock in all three cavern layers. There will be no risk of Forgotten Beasts or other dangers, just a straight drop all the way to the bottom of the magma sea. It will be a very short walk from the surface court to the top of the shaft; dig a passage wide enough for two dwarves to pass each other easily and the cleanup operation will be over extremely quickly."
Tekkud nodded, obviously pleased that he'd no longer be asked to walk up and down a hundred levels of spiral ramp all day long carrying trash. But he still seemed uncertain about the logistics of my plan. "It seems like we're going to be excavating an awful lot of rock for this. Won't that be just as much of a hauling ordeal?"
I shook my head, grinning. "No, that's the best part. You're digging a garbage-disposal shaft, right? So just let the rock you excavate fall into the shaft as you dig it out. Garbage disposed of, no need to haul it anywhere."
Tekkud blinked and then mirrored my grin with a manic glint. "Of course. Dwarven thinking!"
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/nz0w77.jpg)
When the shaft reached bottom I directed that a two-level-tall hallway be carved, so that it would only be half-filled with magma and thus the engineering more visible. I wasn't sure why I was concerned with improving the appearance of the site - I was sure that no visitor would ever come down there. At least, I was sure until I had the fortified magma inlet carved and heard report of the structure of the surrounding magma sea.
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/2637cq9.jpg)
Such a nice formation - a single isolated stalagmite of diggable rock descending all the way down to the depths. I'm sure I'll find some interesting use for the space down there at some point. Until then, though, the garbage-dumping resumes at a much faster pace. By the end of 521 most of the surface trash has been disposed of, with the remainder that was worth salvaging being brought below as the stockpiles in the deeps get their own scouring of low-quality crap to make room for it.
Meanwhile, there is more good news to report about Lower Battlefailed. The baby Stukos Mengbecor, daughter of the engraver Goden Zuntarsanreb, learned to walk. Goden and Stukos were immediately assigned to the designated "safe" zone, and unlike poor Deler they were close enough to make it there without Stukos stepping in anything unfortunate along the way. Stukos has now been living down there happily for over half a year. I believe this confirms that the dining hall, food stockpile, living quarters, and kitchens are all safe (Goden was assigned kitchen duty as well, so that she would have something to do once she'd finished smoothing the Safe Zone). More recently, Urist Shematak began to walk on her own - the daughter of Meng, who tragically lost her first child Rovod to my ill-conceived "cleaning troughs" (which I have since renamed "death troughs"). Urist and Stukos seem to be getting along well together, playing as children do. A donkey foal joined them, the first live animal birth in Battlefailed. The foal has been remaining close to its mother, who is still roped up in the quarantined clean room, but the mule I had released earlier is also still alive and staying in the dining hall so it may also survive once it matures to wander a bit farther afield.
I have had the cows unpacked from storage and roped up in the clean room next. It will be nice to get some fresh beef on the tables - we've subsisted on little other than Ancient-Corpse-Tallow Roasts and Poisoned-Forgotten-Beast meat for far too long.
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/25k37md.jpg)
There have been no further goblin sieges, and the suicidal kobolds appear to have ceased coming as well - perhaps leaving in despair at the sight of the clean sandy fields outside of Battlefailed. We did receive a few minor goblin ambushers, however, and the marksdwarves' perch in the sprinkler head of FAILCANNON has proven to be an excellent sniping position indeed - especially when facing foes with no ranged weapons of their own. One particularly brutal example ensued, a goblin ambusher who was caught between the arrow-traps below and marksdwarves above:
(http://oi54.tinypic.com/nw10uo.jpg)
(http://oi52.tinypic.com/egcwh5.jpg)
The wretched creature had no fewer than fifteen projectiles lodged in various parts of his body and still he kept twitching and crawling when bouts of consciousness returned to him. In the end, the marksdwarf Zon Evudkol felt enough pity for the thing that she climbed down from her perch and put it out of its misery with a single blow to the head.
(http://oi54.tinypic.com/j94zg0.jpg)
Well, either that or she just ran out of bolts to fire, or perhaps body parts to stick them through. I choose not to think about it further. Zon's scary.
Provided we remain vigilant it would seem that we're safe from surface attack for now. Though an Elven caravan and a pair of migrants were not so lucky, being caught in the open before reaching the safety of our poisonous gates.
As the year wore on I realized that my clothing was beginning to approach a "tattered" state. I would soon be retreating to the safe zone myself for a while, along with my fellow founding members, and there was one remaining mystery of Old Battlefailed that I wanted to get a look at before I faced the incredibly risky process of changing into a new suit of clothing. In Upper Battlefailed is a series of rough rooms carved from a magnetite deposit that appeared to have never been used for anything before being abandoned and flooded. At the end of a hallway there is a staircase leading down, which is still flooded. The staircase goes a long way down, in fact - too far to see even though the water is quite clear. Draining it will be a matter of digging a drainage passage to it far in the depths. I estimated where it likely passed near the Boneyards and had a passage carefully carved to meet it.
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/aafo.jpg)
Note the care I took to avoid disastrous floods in the event that the staircase had a reservoir above - by digging into the damp rock at an angle the pressure of the water's weight is defused, and the door serves as a further blockade. The Boneyards do have drainage via grates covering the remains of the old pump stack on the first cavern layer, but best not to rely on that if it's not needed.
And it wasn't needed. The brief glimpse the miner got when he breached the staircase revealed that we weren't close to our goal just yet. The staircase descended yet further down, around a landing, and to a mysterious chamber and hallway leading into darkness.
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/29dicmc.jpg)
I have planned out a route for digging out a deeper drainage tunnel all the way down to this mystery chamber. It's a race between my failing shoes and the miners now to see what secrets will be revealed before I have to retire.
Oh, and I shall end the year on another fortuitous note. The armorer Mafol Akrulsanreb got a secretive air about him, seized some bars of steel and other components, and produced an artifact set of steel greaves. The first thing I've commissioned from our new prodigy is a set of poison-proof steel high boots. Here's hoping I'll be able to get into them without touching the tatters of my old shoes in the process.
Year 522
From the journal of Deler Cerolgim, bookkeeper
So, Tekkud and the other Founders have retreated to the "safe zone" for now, in anticipation of their protective clothing reaching its best-by date. The task falls to me to breach the mysterious flooded chamber that's been discovered underneath Upper Battlefailed. I'm not a very experienced miner but Kikrost assures me the plan is very simple and pretty much foolproof. Looking it over I have to agree; dig a staircase straight down from the Boneyards so that it passes near the flooded chamber, continuing down another floor and then out the side to drain into the giant lake filling the first cavern layer. A stoneworker accompanied me to help carve only a narrow Beast-proof drainage slot at the end of this tunnel. Then, once that's all done, strike the wall and as soon as the water starts flowing climb up a level to remain clear of it.
Ral Iddeduk, a bowyer who was a passing acquaintance of mine, told me this morning that he'd had a vision that night. He'd been peculiarly secretive about it and as I'd headed down here to dig he'd gone off to the workshops muttering under his breath. I wondered if he'd somehow known something about what I might find.
As I passed near the chamber's location the stone became damp, groaning quietly and sweating under the great pressure of the water. The flooded staircase leading down here was almost fifty flights tall so there was a lot of weight bearing down on it. But the path Kikrost had marked on the maps was indeed safe. I dug past it and soon enough the stoneworker and I were down in dry rock putting the finishing touches on the drain. I paused for a moment once it was done, peering out through the narrow fortification into the first cavern level. A steady low moan echoed through the vast space and at first I chalked it up to wind. But then the moan paused and I swore I could hear Aci draw a breath somewhere out there before it resumed. I shuddered and went back up to the part of the shaft with moistened walls to finish my work.
The oozing water had been filtered through several meters of porous rock and yet it still reeked, the fresh-hewn walls already showing unwholesome stains and streaks. I shook my head and grimaced. This wasn't going to be glamorous. I struck, my trusty pick biting into the rock and flaking away rough chunks. Eventually the wet sheen became beads, actively dripping, and then thin high-pressure sprays began trickling through cracks. Almost there...
The final blow sank the pick's head unexpectedly deep, and then it was immediately blasted back out of the divot it had made by the jet of dark water. The jet was mixed with gravel as it clawed at the edges of the hole. I scrambled backward and hurried up the stairs, exactly as I'd rehearsed over and over in my mind, and managed to beat the flood. I was drenched in the foul-smelling stuff but unlike Tekkud my clothing held firm; after surviving the poisons of Battlefailed a little stink wasn't going to bother me.
The torrent blasted through for some time as the stairwells above drained. Technically, my job here was done; there were masons up there who'd been waiting for that to start happening and were no doubt already following the water down bearing blocks of stone to patch up the exploratory shafts that had been dug earlier. But I waited for the initial surge to subside, the staircase's water column emptied and the immense pressure gone with it, and peered back down through the hole once an airspace finally appeared at the ceiling. I had to admit it; Kikrost's regret at not being able to be present for this discovery had piqued my own curiousity in no small measure.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/11hgx3m.jpg)
The passage beyond looked strange. Its walls were carved by tools, clearly, but it meandered in an aimless curving way that seemed unplanned. A mineshaft that had followed a vein of minerals, perhaps? No, from what I could see of the floor and ceiling there were no traces of minerals - just ordinary granite. Very strange.
The water was foul. Now that the stairs were empty the water was draining from the farther recesses of the twisty passage, and it bore with it the stench of decay. I was used to it, though - this would be far from the first flooded chamber packed with old corpses that I'd encountered here in Battlefailed. I started wading against the flow to get a better look around some of the corners, ready to flee if any skeletons roused themselves like that one terrible time in the magma works.
But there were no skeletons, no traces of any bodies. Just an oily sheen of rotten fat and pus on the surface of the water. I grimaced and forged ahead. What had died down here? Finally I spotted it. A huge, looming form half-submerged at the end of the twisty passage, curled up as if it had hidden itself away. It was some sort of giant lizard-like creature, and although it looked emaciated and its skin was glistening with rot it seemed basically intact. The great depth and stillness of the water must have preserved it somehow. I wrinkled my nose, hoping the butchers and cooks didn't get any ideas.
The water was deep and still no longer. The corpse shifted. I froze. Had it just been nudged by the flow? No. My heart started hammering harder as it stretched, rolling over onto its rotten paws. Disgusting fluids oozed from the network of scars that covered every part of its body. This was no corpse even though it looked more than halfway to that state. It was alive. It turned its eyeless head toward me and emitted a shuddering huff. A hurricane of dust blasted through the cavern's air.
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/dhg9j5.jpg)
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/vdnx4.jpg)
I, of course, ran screaming for the stairway. The creature followed in hot pursuit.
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"Forgotten Beast! Seal the Boneyards! Seal the Boneyards!" The Boneyards were the old marble mines, a series of regularly spaced narrow passages below Upper Battlefailed that served as a common frontier when dealing with threats like this. The masons were already hard at work on the task and frantically put the finishing touches on their barricades as I ran past. One of them, I couldn't remember his name, worked so quickly that he accidentally sealed himself into the stairwell with me. That meant that the only way out for us was the flooded stairway's original entrance, in the magnetite halls of Upper Battlefailed.
It was a long stairway and my mind was racing as fast as my feet. The beast had been down here all along while we'd been exploring and refurbishing Battlefailed, with free access to the fort at any time. The only thing that had kept it quiescent had been the enormous weight of water flooding the staircase. Had the previous inhabitants of Battlefailed trapped it there that way? Was that the reason why the magnetite halls had apparently been abandoned before they'd even been furnished?
Every provision had been made in Kikrost's plan to allow this chamber to drain safely. No provision had been made to stop it from draining.
As we approached the top of the stairway the mason and I began to falter. The beast behind us was tireless. This near the original surface of the water there had been some life in it, a scum of biofilm on the rocks, and it made the stairs slippery; the mason slipped and fell in a puddle. I grabbed his arm and helped him up. "We need to seal the stair behind us!"
"Can't... can't..." the mason panted. "It's too wide, and there's no raw stone nearby. No time!"
"Then we keep running. Upper Battlefailed has been lost before, maybe we can survive losing it again." I wasn't sure I really believed that; I knew that Upper Battlefailed would be relatively easy to seal off from Lower Battlefailed, but not from the surface. And once this creature was out there, how could it possibly be contained? We'd be trapped below.
We made it up to the magnetite hall and I grimaced. So appropriately, the useless space had been converted into yet another refuse stockpile; bones and skeletons were stacked everywhere. The huffing blasts of dust were coming right on my heels now and I knew my only hope was that it would pause to destroy some of the doors we'd installed for no reason other than a sense of neatness.
Then the creature stepped in the same puddle that the mason had slipped in.
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Whatever had happened to the beast in the lost history of Battlefailed had left terrible wounds, but only now did it falter. The poisons of Battlefailed seeped in easily through the skin of its ruined feet. By the time it reached the top of the stairs its legs were barely working at all and it began crawling through the mounds of refuse, the splintered bones tearing at its glistening skin and rupturing the blood-filled blisters swelling in it.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/2d9s1e8.jpg)
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/b8a0cj.jpg)
Finally, the creature shuddered to a halt. Its breathing stilled, its dust settled, and it joined the rest of the corpses piled throughout the magnetite hall.
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/2it06xt.jpg)
Later, as I shakily returned to Lower Battlefailed for a much-needed drink, I heard a shout of triumph from the workshops. I detoured by to see the crowd of dwarves clustered around the bowyer's bench.
(http://oi52.tinypic.com/dol6w3.jpg)
Perhaps Armok is indeed telling us something.
From the journal of Kikrost Duralkosoth
We drained the upper part of the mystery chamber. There was a bit of excitement with some creature that had been lurking but Battlefailed poisoned it when it came out. Disappointingly, it seems to be just a random rough-hewn passage. There is a yet lower chamber that's still flooded, however, down a short flight of stairs. I've ordered a drainage pump built to see if there's anything more down there but I'm not expecting much at this point - perhaps this was just some sort of unfinished project started by one of the managers of Old Battlefailed.
Speaking of projects, I think the cleanup operations are in a very satisfying spot now - all of Lower Battlefailed is safe from poison and the clutter is being sorted and dumped efficiently. It's time for a few renovations to help settle us in here for good and assert our control over the caverns and surface beyond our walls. If this is where we're going to live, it's going to not just be livable, it's going to be nice.
Firstly, I'm going to have the magma works overhauled. There's floorspace down there for a lot more magma workshops than are currently installed, but the magma ducts will need to be re-dug to support them. For efficiency of operations we'll also need stockpile space down there for raw ore and other materials. For stockpiles, I'm directing that a second level be dug out directly above the forges; they'll be accessed by a series of nickel stairways directly between the workshops.
I've also had the fort go on a major door-installation push. Many doors had to be dismounted during the draining of Battlefailed, and many seem to have never been installed in the first place, but the masons have been busy and they'll be good for further compartmentalization of Battlefailed in the case of future disasters or flooding.
Many of the statues and workshops left over from old Battlefailed have items of trash (or even perhaps items of value) that the flowing floodwaters have wedged in to inaccessible locations. I'm having them removed and rebuilt.
We're in need of wood. While going over the maps planning out the drainage for the mystery chamber I noticed that the mystery bunker out on the northern beach has a ramp that leads directly down to the first cavern level. This should allow wood harvesting without risking exposing the fortress to the beasts that might be lurking elsewhere on that level. I've ordered that the bunker be refurbished with a drawbridge and roof to allow it to be sealed off completely as needed.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/22ysro.jpg)
Armok damn it! This thing showed up right where I was going to cut down trees, just minutes after I finished designating them all. Fortunately I'd already had a hatch cover built on the ramp in that bunker years ago, before I'd known where it led - because I didn't know where it led. So this beast will be locked underground while the bunker is properly finished up and sealed to prevent surface vandals from accidentally unleashing it.
Instead I'll have wood harvested from the northeastern corner of the third cavern layer. There are a couple of Forgotten Beasts lurking down on that layer too, but they're all non-flying living creatures so if they're disturbed they should die easily enough when they enter the stairway of death. Hopefully we won't lose many woodcutters or haulers in such a circumstance.
I've determined that there's just three ramp segments between the safe zone and the magma works that are still contaminated, I've ordered them rebuilt with fresh stone to expedite cleaning them. Then Safe Zone workers should be able to work the forges and furnaces too.
Meanwhile, digging out the new "attic" for the magmaworks has run into some odd difficulties. It seems that the stone in this area has an interesting history behind it. The miners reported discovering a tiny water-filled cavity in the obsidian with a full-grown still-living black-cap tree sealed inside. Another contained a goblin-cap. Elsewhere they encountered inexplicably warm walls. It seems that this area was at some point covered in magma and then doused with water to harden it, leaving pockets behind. How peculiar.
(http://oi52.tinypic.com/11qqr29.jpg)
Well, there are no visible connections to the magma sea or any other fluid sources, so these pockets shouldn't be all that big. I ordered an exploratory hole poked in one, as far from the stairs down as possible to give any flow time to dissipate.
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/2akeiah.jpg)
It looks like there was an old magma channel at the former ground level that got sealed over by the flooding. That's not so bad. In fact, the magma is doing some good up there - when the trees were dug out the spilled water washed some contaminants off of the miners and spread it around a little. This magma is cleaning some of it up. To get the rest I ordered the next section of the magmaduct to be breached as well.
(http://oi54.tinypic.com/rbjr0h.jpg)
Damnit! What kind of engineering were those old Battlefaileders up to here, was this a magmaduct or an aqueduct? This unexpected deluge spread quite a bit of contaminant around. Ah well, the miners finished lancing the magma pockets and the rest of the mess can be cleaned up later once the magma fades away.
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That stairway at the north end of the last exposed section leads down into solid rock. Most peculiar.
Surprisingly, although the magma cleaned the poisons it flowed over, I have discovered that Longland flour and several other common substances are magma-safe. Who knew?
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Winter still remains of the year 522, but I don't anticipate much excitement now. The mysteries have been delved into, now all that remains is rearranging the furniture. New projects will be planned at the turn of 523.
How many artifacts have you gotten so far?
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How exactly did the FB look like? I'm in a drawing mood right now^^
Buqui, the Lurker in the Depths, Hurricane of Caves? I screenshotted its desc in the log above, see
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/vdnx4.jpg)
(http://oi51.tinypic.com/b8a0cj.jpg)
Since it had a title I was planning on checking Legends to see what it had done to earn it, but haven't got to that yet.
Got it finally done.
(http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z442/WymarSane/BuquiInutkomfinished.png)
Year 523
The year opened with a bit of a startling false alarm. "Kikrost!" Athel Edemanam came rushing up to me in a panic. "A forgotten beast! It's destroyed a granite door!" I had taken care to seal the caverns in such a way that Beasts couldn't get in to any destroyable barriers, so I immediately feared another potentially-fatal oversight and rushed to the scene down in the third cavern layer.
(http://oi53.tinypic.com/15mea7s.jpg)
Silly Wothana, that door's been sealed by masonry since forever. Still, it's interesting to note that now that the water level in that twisty warren of passages has dropped below waist height the Beasts that had been lurking there have roused themselves and begun wandering. It seems that although Forgotten Beasts don't drown, a healthy application of water can at least make them quiescent.
Anyway, the moment of alarm past, it was time to begin work on our reservoir issues. The current reservoir is still mostly full but we've got the manpower to spare so it's good to get these things done early. The current reservoir appears to get its water from a stack of 12 manually operated pumps, which is not exactly an optimal arrangement but which I'm not going to reengineer right now; it shouldn't be necessary to run these often.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/16j3gcn.jpg)
Looking at the schematics reveals an interesting opportunity. The pump stack is located directly underneath the main food storage and preparation room of Lower Battlefailed:
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/2a7g2s8.jpg)
Adding one more pump to the stack will allow this room to be repurposed as our new dedicated drinking reservoir. Furthermore, if you look one more level up on the maps, another nice alignment is revealed:
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/2m5h4yx.jpg)
The new reservoir extends directly underneath the main dining hall. This will allow wells to be constructed right there where everyone's eating and drinking anyway. Convenient!
The loss of the current food storage room will require a new home for all that food to be found. After a thorough examination of the rooms of Lower Battlefailed, it appears that there isn't really any good place for it - by this point we're thankfully well beyond the "store everything anywhere that you can cram it" phase of Battlefailed's reclaimation (at one point I had to resort to storing cages with goblin prisoners in occupied living quarters - I'm told a lot of dwarves slept poorly as a result of that decision). So a new room will have to be excavated. Battlefailed is no longer just reclaimed, it is now growing!
There's already a large set of staircases in the dining hall that lead up to unbroken ceiling. Presumably the old Battlefaileders had expansion plans in that direction anyway, and checking the maps shows ample clear space above the main dining hall, so in the same style as the storage attic that was dug for the magmaworks I ordered a food storage attic to be dug directly above the dining hall. As with the new well location, this moves food and drink closer to where it will be consumed.
While work began below, an Elven trading caravan arrived with an extremely welcome load of wood. We hustled them inside, and none too soon - right after them came a goblin siege force, no doubt in hot pursuit of the caravan's valuable logs.
The goblins have axes in abundance and can travel to the nearby forests. Why do they instead come here to die? No matter. Fortunately the entire population was busy hauling food barrels and trade goods at the time, so nobody was caught outside. I sent the marksdwarf squad up to the sprinkler head to deal with the invaders. After some time had passed with no reports one way or another, however, I began to get worried. The elves were done trading and looked to be getting a bit edgy about being trapped in our toxic delvings. I took a few hours off of the reservoir project to go topside and see what was going on.
The marksdwarves were all in the sprinkler head, crouched alertly in front of the fortification slits and watching the army of goblins camped below. The army of goblins was watching back. Nobody was shooting, or moving all that much. I asked the captain of the guard to explain the situation.
"No bolts," Stukos grunted. "So we're just hoping our reputation will drive them away."
"But you should have plenty of bolts. I bought a couple of binloads off of traders last year. Decent bronze stuff, not bad for human work. I told you guys to reserve them for combat."
"Yeah, and that's why we couldn't do any organized archery training lately."
"Right. So..." I noticed the adjective Stukos had thrown in there and sighed. "You used them up on your own time, didn't you."
Stukos nodded. "I'm getting really good. See that blighter way down there, with the copper scourge? I bet I could land a solid groin shot on him."
"If you had any bolts, that is."
"Yeah, if I had any bolts." Stukos cocked his head. "You gonna get on that, manager, or what?"
The magma forge was still out of commission while the new channels underneath were being dug, and I was in a bit of a grumpy mood from Stukos' carelessness so I wasn't eager to waste precious metal making them a new set. "They want training bolts, they get training bolts." I put in a large work order to have bolts made from the bones that Battlefailed has in vast abundance.
Eventually the marksdwarves were resupplied. Then they brutally butchered the siege force and the elves were free to depart in safety. The elves nearly committed suicide by pressing up against the inside of the drawbridge, which for some reason opens inward instead of the more traditional outward direction. They backed off just in time to avoid being crushed. Then, as they left, a migrant wave arrived. So everything worked out just about perfectly.
The bone bolts were surprisingly effective. I examined a few afterward and was very impressed with the quality of their manufacture. It seems Battlefailed as quietly cultivated an extremely skilled force of bonecrafters, I've had them continuously crafting skulls into totems so that they can be stored more compactly in bins. Finally a use for all this bone!
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I also got to see the ballistae in operation against live targets, due to a fortunate choice the goblins made in where to camp during the siege. Not bad - took out a few goblins at extreme range. The effectiveness of the ballistae were reduced by the cowardice of the operators, unfortunately - whenever a goblin got too close they'd panic and flee their posts, despite being in control of the most massive weapon known to dwarfkind and being protected behind an impassible fortification. I've added ballista improvements to my to-do list - we need more of them to cover a wider field of fire, and a better control system for the fortification covers.
In the meantime the new reservoir is finished and the new pump is in place. I had an extension dug southward, running under the western edge of the dining hall, to allow for additional wells. An additional dwarf-powered pump is in place to fill it, draining the old reservoir into the new one. Three wells have been installed in the dining hall, two of native silver and one of gold.
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The year ended much as it began, with a goblin siege arriving at our doorsteps.
For years Battlefailed had thwarted goblin assaults by cowering behind its walls and waiting them out. It had become a bit of a tired ritual really, a stalemate in which nobody really won and nobody lost. The siege that Spring had shown that the game was changing. The gates had closed quickly and the goblins had set up camp, as usual. But then Battlefailed had gone on the offensive. Crossbow bolts rained down from the old overhanging sculpture of a giant skull, and a number of ballista bolts lanced out from apertures in the walls. Now, not even a year later, even more ballista apertures had been carved.
The goblins knew this could no longer be a stalemate. They had to get inside and make it a melee fight, and fast before the gates had time to seal.
Amxu Gozrudab, the legendary goblin mace lord, led his squad of swordsgoblins in a full-out run across the sandy plain. The past decade's wreckage and litter had been cleaned up recently, removing cover but leaving the ground open for much-needed speed. As the goblins approached Amxu saw that the gates were still open and only a handful of marksdwarves had managed to scramble to their stations. The few haphazard bolts they fired at the approaching goblins were no threat; Amxu blocked the only one that came his way with a swing of his weapon. If they could just make it through the gate...
Amxu leapt across the threshold with a triumphant yell, just ahead of his squadmates struggling to keep up. Then the gate slammed shut behind him and the rest of the goblins crashed to a halt against it outside. Amxu didn't even notice. At last, he was inside Battlefailed! The promise of dwarf skulls crunching beneath his morning star filled him with unquenchable bloodlust and he charged onward into the entry hall.
Paving stones clicked underfoot, triggering traps. Dozens of arrows shot out from tiny holes in the walls but Amxu moved too fast for even their automated reflexes, rolling forward past them. He danced right past the slashing blade traps without even setting them off, and the cage traps had not been reloaded since the mechanics had been busy with other tasks.
There was only one obstacle remaining between Amxu and the helpless civillian popupation of Battlefailed. The marksdwarf Zon Evudkol had been just passing by, rushing to reach her post, when the goblin had burst in upon her. Zon bore the legendary artifact crossbow Silentslick, so named for its impossibly smooth operation as well as how its bloodthorn wood always looked unsettlingly wet with blood, and reflex raised the weapon up to fire a bone bolt at the enemy that had suddenly appeared.
Zon's reflexes failed her. The bolt went wide. Amxu gave a cruel, mocking sneer and hefted his iron morningstar in his right hand. "You are not worthy of weapon," he grunted in broken Dwarvish before charging.
Zon desperately raised Silentslick to block the attack, but true to his word Amxu didn't swing his weapon at her, instead delivering a terrible face-shattering blow with his empty left fist. As Zon reeled back, blinded by the pain and fountaining blood from her ruined nose, Amxu slammed the pommel of his morningstar down on her foot and tackled her.
Amxu rose back up and stood over the writhing dwarf and his cruel smile widened. He recognized this one from reports by earlier survivors of attacks on Battlefailed; this was the dwarf that had spent all day shooting bolts into nonlethal parts of a crippled goblin lying before Battlefailed's gates. Payback would be extra sweet. He swung his morningstar, first bashing Zon's legs to keep her down while he methodically worked her over. Bones shattered and flesh split under the assault.
But Amxu's brutality proved to be his undoing. With still nothing between him and the interior of the fort he tarried to extend Zon's agony, her screams echoing off the walls and alerting her fellows already positioned in the fortifications above to the invader within their defenses. Amxu let her scream, reveled in her screaming, focusing his blows on her ruined limbs. He slammed the morningstar into Zon's foot so hard that it stuck there, and he started kicking her rather than pull it out.
He was unable to either dodge or block when Kib Uzoldakost burst out of the stairwell behind him and fired a single bolt into Amxu's upper back. The bolt tore through his spine, sundering muscle and tendon and nerves. Amxu dropped both morningstar and shield from suddenly-limp fingers and toppled over, a stunned expression frozen on his face. Where moments ago he'd thought of nothing but bloodlust and murder, now he could only think of escape. He struggled to move. It was a testament to his might that he was able to, barely, squirm a short distance back toward the gate.
Right onto the slashing blade traps that he had so effortlessly skipped over only moments earlier. The trigger clicked and weapons lashed out, tearing skin in a dozen places but even now none able to land a fatal blow. Kib fired again, putting a bolt through Amxu's leg, but that didn't slow him down any more than he already had been by the shot to the spine.
Then Stukos arrived on the scene, the new recruit Onol Dallithlikot in tow. Stukos took one look at what had been done to Zon and brushed Kib aside. "We've got a siege waiting out there," he said grimly. "No time to waste. Vital organs... but not too vital." *Shunk*. Stukos put a bolt through Amxu's right lung. *Shunk*. Another bolt directly into Amxu's guts. The goblin's breathing became as labored as his movement and he looked ready to vomit. A fresh round of weapon traps triggered, further slicing and slashing the suffering goblin's skin. Stukos nodded. "No worries about recovering from that. Onol, quick, see to Zon."
Onol's expression was like that of an Elkbird witnessing a cavein bearing down on it. She had always been a thrill-seeker but had never even seen battle before, she was fresh on the squad, and now this had landed in her lap. She hurried over and knelt by Zon's side.
(http://oi56.tinypic.com/swyfeg.jpg)
Zon was barely conscious. "What do I do, Zon?" Onol asked desperately.
"Mercy," the dwarven woman managed to whimper. "Please, mercy."
Onol surged back to her feet and spun to face the goblin who had done this. In a rage, she delivered a kick to the quivering heap. The goblin whimpered too and Onol's rage faded. "Mercy. Right." Onol reached down and gripped Amxu's limp hand.
With a quick, firm pull, Onol slid the goblin's body into position over a slot in the floor. Its weight triggered the trap one more time and an iron scimitar scythed out, neatly bisecting the creature. One last burbling wheeze and it was over.
"Thank you," Zon whispered, finally fading into unconsciousness.
Despite heroic efforts on the part of the medical staff of Battlefailed, Zon would later succumb to infections from her many wounds without ever waking again.
(http://oi55.tinypic.com/ibe253.jpg)
The new reservoir has been filled with water pumped out of the old reservoir, emptying the old reservoir and allowing me to descend and inspect the interior.
I have discovered a Temple of Madness.
The water we've been drinking all this time once filled a broad hallway, permeating the strange machinery filling alcoves along the sides. Twin axle shafts run the length of the hall, connected at each alcove by a gearbox. The alcoves each contain a pump, with trenches on each side containing a pair of waterwheels hooked up directly to the pump. The dark, dripping paddles of the wheels have clearly not moved in some time, but from the wear on their bearings they just as obviously have moved at some point in the past.
How? There is no source of water, no sink, no flow save for the gentle swirling as the water had been pumped out to allow access. I summoned Tirist Lazonol, our finest mechanic, to join me in the inspection and explain what I was seeing.
Tirist is of legendary skill, earned the hard way through work and experience rather than supernatural inspiration, and even so he was rather awed by the sight as well. "I've heard rumors of such constructions before but I've never seen one... and certainly never on a scale like this. These are self-contained dual-wheel water reactors. The pump brings water up from below, here, and deposits it here. It then flows to either side, into the trenches, there. And that flow turns the water wheels, which powers the pump. The net result is excess energy, which is tapped by those gears and fed into these two parallel axle lines."
"So, it produces power from nothing?"
"Yes, quite so." Tirist walked with me down the dripping hallway inspecting the devices as we went. The machinery looked intact, though stone rubble littered the floor and half-filled the trenches - the Old Battlefaileders who had excavated the place had been quite sloppy in cleaning up afterward. Presumably this was not something that had been intended for anyone to set eyes on again. "There are eight pairs of dual-wheel units, they all look intact," Tirist reported at the end. He did some mental calculations. "That many waterwheels will produce 3200 Urists of power. The internal losses by the wheels and pumps alone would be 480 Urists, and it looks like the gears and axels collecting the power together accounts for another 127, give or take. So this system - should it be set in motion - would generate a net output of just under 2600 Urists."
I whistled. "What did Old Battlefailed need that sort of power for?"
"There was an axle emerging from the reservoir when we first reopened Lower Battlefailed, remember," Tirist reminded me. "It ran down the hall to what looked like an empty pump stack shaft, the one we used for drainage when reclaiming the apartment stacks and then sealed up because it led directly down to some Forgotten Beasts lurking in the water."
I nodded. "Yes, I recall. We were urgently in need of wood and it obviously wasn't useful for anything so I had it dismantled." Tirist had a pained look at my mention of that but I couldn't feel any regret - as manager of this fortress I had to be pragmatic in balancing our needs and resources. I looked around at the waterwheels and axles filling the chamber. We were pretty short on wood right now, too, and there was a vast amount that could be salvaged from here. But before I gave Tirist a heart attack by suggesting dismantling this ridiculous apparatus I needed to think some more about its purpose.
Old Battlefailed had been a society under siege, pressed hard from all sides by danger. It had ultimately been unable to muster the force to withstand what had faced them. And yet they had spent a not inconsiderable amount of effort on this thing. Had that waste been their undoing? Or did they have a grand plan that required it, and their failure to complete it had been their end instead?
I returned to my offices to pour over the maps of Battlefailed that I had been compiling. There was the empty pump stack that this abomination had been intended to power. It had obviously never been completely dug out, its top led nowhere. The bottom end descended all the way down to the waters of the lowest cavern level.
Right next to the magmaworks... I blinked. There hadn't been much scouting done in the caverns, of course, but the ongoing renovations to the magmaworks had resulted in a detailed record of the underside of the cavern, where the magma sea's roof brushed against its floor. There was a strange obsidian "stalactite" hanging directly underneath. The pump stack hadn't led to the water, not originally anyway, it had driven all the way through to the magma beneath.
A screw pump made of the right materials could theoretically pump sufficiently fluid magma. I started doing some calculations of my own, and combed the old records of what pump components had been resting in Old Battlefailed's inventory when we'd first arrived here. They'd never completed the task, obviously, but...
I worked long into the night. At several points dwarves came to knock on my chamber doors, and when I emerged in the morning they were relieved that I had not become Peculiarly Secretive. I felt just as inspired as if I had, however.
"Gentledwarves," I announced, "I have figured out what Old Battlefailed had hoped to accomplish here in this terrible place. A project that would have protected them forever. And I believe I have improved on that plan."
It would be a very busy year for Battlefailed, full of industry and activity.
The power generators we had discovered would be kept intact. I directed that additional drainage be dug for the trenches to allow the rubble to be cleared out of it. The floors would be resurfaced with worked stone to prevent the growth of any vegetation that might affect the system's operation.
The magmaworks renovations were nearly complete, but I'd been taking a leisurely pace overseeing the final steps since there'd been no pressing need for them.
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Now there was a pressing need. The magma conduits under the furnaces were finally filled. I had a dozen magma smelters built to clear the massive backlog of old scrap metal that needed melting down - mustn't neglect ongoing cleanup operations just because one new idea has seized my interest - and the rest of the magmaworks were turned over to glass furnaces. We would need over a hundred sections of glass tubing and over a hundred glass corkscrews. The masonry shops were directed to produce a like number of stone blocks. Gabbro and mica preferred.
Tekkud and his miners were given a task too. The fantastic garbage chute they'd constructed for me would need some modifications and expansions dug.
And FAILCANNON... The masons received their orders. A redesign would be needed there. We'd already stripped off the old scaffolding and windmill platforms, so all that was needed now was the construction of new ones. Better ones.
I had long wondered just what the old Battlefaileders had been thinking when they'd constructed that ridiculous giant water faucet. I saw now that that had only been an interim state, a barely-functional stopgap measure. Now FAILCANNON would finally fulfill its promise and succeed.
It was a time of renovation throughout the fortress. And a good thing, too. With the main hauling tasks of cleanup finally finished there had been less and less for the bulk of the fortress population to do, resulting in an increasing population of idle dwarves. Idle dwarves who had plenty of time to fraternize. As a trained fortress manager I could see the danger of this - I hardly need mention dwarven sociologist Urist Kedkol's seminal treatise on the subject, "On the Development of Criticality in Dwarven Interpersonal Relationship Networks". We had finally reached the count of 200 dwarves, the threshold at which even mad Queen Lem realized it was time to stop sending migrants to us, so we had plenty of dwarfpower on hand for the work. Everything proceeded very smoothly and quickly.
There was one interruption this year. During the height of summer our lookouts reported a broad swath of smoke on the horizon, rising through the shimmering heat of the sandy grassland of the Plains of Ooze. I didn't pay the report much mind since no caravans were due, no goods were outside to suffer damage, and even if the fire did find some path through the patchy vegetation it couldn't harm Battlefailed's walls. But soon the heart of the fire came within visual range. It was a brush titan named Lafo. It was a strange beast composed of flame, with a shell and a stinger and not much else identifiable in its infernal structure.
After some thought I weighed the risks and decided to allow Lafo into our gatehouse. I had our military forces wait below, just inside the entrance to Upper Battlefailed, to kill it once it had done the hoped-for work. The roaring knot of flame saw our home and its open gate and made a beeline for it.
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I'm told the radiant heat was painful all the way up in the Sprinkler Head, where the lookouts remained in vigil, and the interior of the gatehouse turned into a veritable oven as it passed. The many layers of blood that coated everything in a thick patina shriveled and scorched, peeling off in flakes to rain down on Lafo like some sort of gory snow. The poisons layered in with the blood was also cooked into inert ash. The gatehouse was clean.
When Lafo entered Upper Battlefailed the fight was brief and victorious. Lafo only managed to emit a single scorching burst of flame before being torn apart with our bolts and steel. It turns out that flame is not a very sturdy structural material. Alas, our strangely popular Mayor Fikod was one of two warriors who were caught in the burst of flame and perished of blood loss from his burns before he could be taken to the hospital. We'll miss you, Mayor Fikod, and your ridiculous mandates for native silver items that I have long ignored. May you be united with the stuff in death. An election was immediately held and he was replaced by Kel Kubuklalar, who likes iron and green glass. I'm sure we'll get on wonderfully.
With the gatehouse clean it seems that the only remaining reservoirs of poison in Battlefailed are the Stairway of Death (which has been sealed by a locked hatch for some time now) and our own clothing. This was confirmed by a joyous event shortly after Lafo's visit; a kobold thief was caught inside Upper Battlefailed. The shoeless creature fled upon discovery and when last observed seemed to still be completely healthy.
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I have unleased probe cats to confirm the situation. The few remaining stray spots of contaminant inside Battlefailed will be cleaned by constructing and removing grates over them. Here's an example of one that a cat found, possibly left by Buqui's corpse:
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That excitement aside, the year was one of solid labor. One year, just a single year of work. I set that as our goal arbitrarily since otherwise there'd be too much temptation to relax and plant the seeds of Kedkol's predicted doom. A steady stream of sand bags flowed down from the surface, where a collection area had been designated in one of the unused side-caves of Upper Battlefailed. Finished pump components flowed up, stockpiled in the old dining hall. The old power output gear for the water reactors was removed and the hole sealed over, and a new main power shaft was dug and installed leading in the opposite direction to the west. Since the reactors were destined to be flooded again once the rubble was cleared I took extra care to ensure that no water could follow the shaft all the way to the magma pumps, to spill in and clog the mechanisms; I had the drive shaft rise up a level when it had to make a bend anyway, and in addition I added an overflow drain to the cavern outside that would intercept any pressure-driven water that made it over the rise just in case something unexpected occurred.
FAILCANNON received some more renovations. The archery range was moved down into Upper Battlefailed and the structure's "barrel" was simplified to allow a small room for ammunition to be maintained. A new archer post was established one level above the Sprinkler Head, carving arrow slits directly into the giant bone skull. A system of nickel drawbridges was built inside FAILCANNON's barrel to allow leftover fluids to be quickly and completely cleared between firings, and a set of gabbro doors was installed at the tip of FAILCANNON to allow the fluid pressure inside the cannon to build up before being unleashed.
The nickel purge system is very important to the new design. You see, the original FAILCANNON, as it was when we arrived here, had two windmill-driven pump stacks that drew seawater up from the surface of the ocean. I presume there were two merely to increase the water flow rate. Since the magma was ultimately going to be delivered from the deeps by just a single pump stack, only one magma pump stack would be needed within FAILCANNON itself. The other pump stack was still rebuilt, however. I had it extended downward by an additional level to tap into the ocean a full level below the surface. This gives this single pump stack access to fully pressurized ocean water and should allow a far greater sustained water flow rate than the old dual stack unpressurized-source design.
FAILCANNON will be able to shoot both hot and cold running fail. An important note to all future operators; make very sure to purge the barrel of one substance before switching to the other. A messy and damaging obsidian jam will occur otherwise.
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Going down to the sources of the upper stack pumps:
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The garbage chute was quickly converted into a fully-equipped magma pump stack. I broke with the design philosophy that the other pump stacks of Old Battlefailed had used by not relying on direct contact from one pump to the next to transmit power. Instead I had each pump fully supported by an intact floor and installed a 110-level-tall gear shaft beside the pump stack to transmit and distribute power among the pumps. This required 156 additional mechanisms and 111 additional axle segments, and increased the power requirement per level from 10 Urists to 18.5 Urists. The tradeoff for this additional complexity is a far more robust system. I had seen firsthand the fragility of the more efficient pump-supported pump stack several years earlier when Aci had smashed a pump at the bottom of the old stack that had used to run next to the Staircase of Death in the first cavern level. With that one pump destroyed the entire stack collapsed. Furthermore, such a stack can only be constructed one pump at a time starting from the bottom and working up. And there would be no way to replace the components of a single pump should it happen to be accidentally constructed of non-magma-safe materials. We had sufficient power resources, and mechanisms required only stone that we had in great abundance so I saw no real downside here.
The only thing we lacked was wood. The additional axles would need a lot of it and we were about 30 logs short. I wasn't concerned. Last time the dwarven caravan had come they'd brought more logs than that, and I had told the trade representative from Mountainhome that we would pay a premium for more. I was sure that come Autumn we would be adequately supplied and the final touches could be put on it all. Autumn was eagerly awaited. We finished everything else ahead of schedule, leaving me time to work on a new control room to house the levers for all of the complex mechanism Battlefailed had sprouted. Finally the caravan came and I rushed down with our broker to see what bounty they'd brought.
Eight logs. Eight measly logs. "We said we'd pay a premium for wood," I told the caravan leader. "You brought me barrels of eel blood. When have we ever purchased eel blood? Twelve anvils. Anvils are not consumable, you realize. We have plenty of anvils. I've had half our anvil supply melted down recently for being a waste of metal and space. If I needed more anvils I could have fifty forged by the end of the month, each one worth more than your entire load of useless scrap! Why did you only bring me eight logs of wood? I would have paid you a thousand dwarfbucks apiece. Ten thousand. As many silk socks as your mules could carry!"
"Would you like some fine prepared sea serpent brain?" The caravan leader asked me instead of answering. "It has excellent value for its weight. Or how about some leather? Fine tanned skins from creatures all across the land. Also excellent value for its weight."
I have to admit, something inside me snapped. I left our broker to deal with these idiots however he liked and stormed down to the armor stockpile in Lower Battlefailed. I already wore steel high boots, a protection against poisonous floors should I step outside of the safe zone, and the ringing of metal on stone must have borne the note of my furious resolve as many of my fellow dwarves stopped what they were doing to watch. "Kikrost, what're you doing?" One asked.
I reached the bins that contained my goal and, as I began suiting up in full steel plate and chain I bellowed "Coastal Ships, Occult Wheels, Glowing Roads, to me!" These were our archers and our best melee fighters, essentially the whole professional military force of Battlefailed. "They mock us with their useless trade goods! The year is nearly up, the project will be complete on schedule. If all we need is wood I shall HEW THE WOOD FROM FLESH AND BONE! TEKKUD!" I saw our chief miner passing and raised a masterwork axe high to beckon him. "I'll need your pick too! With me!"
The growing troop of dwarves marched with me down the hall to my managerial office where the maps of Battlefailed were spread over every surface. "We need wood," I repeated once everyone was assembled. "And we have wood. Nigh on a hundred fungal trees, perhaps more, grow in the second cavern layer. They are guarded by three Forgotten Beasts, all of them ground-bound but one composed of flame and thus immune to Battlefailed's poisons. We have relied on those poisons for too long. We've forgotten what Dwarven steel can accomplish. We're going to take that cavern layer, TODAY."
There was a murmur through the room. My fierce speech had clearly caught the hearts of many, warriors who had never done more than spar were nodding hungrily at the thought of facing even such fearsome foes. But Stukos had seen more battles than any, he bore real scars and he had the real experience necessary for proper caution. "You've never been one to jump into something risky on impulse, Kikrost," he spoke up with a quiet but firm tone. "Tell me you haven't simply become enraged."
I smiled grimly. "Of course I have a plan. The only thing mightier than Dwarven steel is Dwarven engineering. Delving deep, striking the stone. Here's what we're going to do."
It all came to me quite quickly, but perhaps because I had subconsciously already been planning this for a long time and had only needed this final push to make me realize it. The plan was foolproof and also had provision to account for the cases in which it failed anyway. The spiral ramp passed quite near a wall of the second cavern layer, and passing through that narrow wall was a tall vertical shaft that had been dug for some unknown purpose long ago by Old Battlefailed. I would have Tekkud's miners dig a passage to this shaft, and then we'd place stone grates over it to allow access to the far side. Miners would then penetrate the wall into the second cavern layer, and all of our forces would retreat up the spiral ramp just around the corner out of sight.
Forgotten Beasts seem to instinctively know when a path opens to Dwarven prey and unerringly follow it. They also destroy whatever works of Dwarven construction that they encounter. The Beasts would come, and then as they reached the grate-covered shaft they'd do one of three things. One, they would destroy the grate before crossing over it. That would strand them on the far side of the pit and allow our archers to kill them in safety. Two, they would destroy the grate while crossing it. Perhaps the ideal case, this would result in the Beast falling seventeen floors to smash to death in a low-traffic hallway outside the old nobles' quarters (why the Old Battlefaileders dug this shaft I will never know). None of the beasts have poisonous blood so no dangerous contamination should occur. Three, the Beast destroys the grate after crossing. Less optimal, but it will cut off any reinforcements from additional Beasts and allow our warriors to charge around the corner and swarm it all on one.
The passage was carved and low-quality grates were laid. The cavern layer was breached. The first Beast roared in, smashed the grate the moment it saw it, and then stood in befuddlement at the far side of the pit trying to figure out a way to get to us while the marksdwarves rained death upon it. The grate was replaced and the second Beast repeated the pattern. Then the third. Then the cavern was ours.
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The Beasts were hauled off to the butchery, adding our first non-poisoned Forgotten Beast meat to the larder, and our warriors wandered off to resume sparring with both relief and disappointment. A great wave of woodcutters went forth and we had our wood. Later, I had a drawbridge installed beyond the grates; in the event of future Beasts that were not so easy to deal with the cavern could be sealed once more. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.
As winter came upon us there was only one remaining task; refilling and restarting the refurbished water reactors. Unfortunately the only water source for this task was the stack of thirteen manually-powered water pumps drawing water up from a small channel in the third cavern layer. I had not appreciated just how slow a trickle this would produce. By the end of the year only a handful of reactor chambers had sufficient water in them to operate. But it was enough to prove the concept. The internal resistance of the decoupled reactor complex alone is just over 600 Urists, so four reactor chambers would produce enough power to get the entire system running at an idle. I sent four dwarves in to manually prime the pumps of these chambers and sure enough, they started the whole system going. We didn't quite hit our target of a fully operational FAILCANNON in just one year, but it seemed inevitable now. Everything was working. We just needed to wait for the trickle of cavern water to finish reaching the rest of the reactor chambers.
Alright, getting back into the swing of Battlefailed now. This post covers just the first season of year 525. More to follow soon.
Year 525
You could almost hear the steady creak and rumble of the churning waterwheels all the way up in the main dining hall and we were all looking forward to testing the system. And then, a month into 525, word came down from the surface. An approaching goblin siege had been sighted. A siege. Such excitement I felt! It made little sense - sieges were at best a tiresome annoyance, at worst a tragedy and existential threat if we didn't get the gate closed in time or there were workers stranded outside the safety of the walls. But this time we were more than prepared.
Probably. The calculations were precise, the architecture had been checked and double-checked over and over, but there was really only one way to be sure it all worked. I should have refused to even consider testing FAILCANNON under real threat like this - what if something went awry? If some pump somewhere had been built with unsafe components, or perhaps some obscure section of wall hadn't been properly sealed...
No. There would be blood and there would be fire! I rushed down to the main control room, a newly-dug mechanical marvel tucked in a secure place a short distance away from the main dining hall where off-duty dwarves could always be found to be called upon. Sure enough, several were already standing eagerly by the controls ready to unleash the sleeping power of Battlefailed.
A glance at the needle of the reactor power indicator instantly told me that it would be a difficult awakening. Levels hovered around 1200 Urists, only half of the 2400 Urists needed to run both the reactors and the magma pump stack. "Close the main surface drawbridge," I ordered. Nobody was out on the surface today. "Send Stukos' squad up to the Big Skull to keep an eye on the situation while we sort this out. The water supply stack, it's still being manned?"
"Day and night," the control room's shift foreman, Deduk, sighed. "The water source down on the third level, it's a trickle. You can't pump blood from a stone no matter how stout the dwarf who tries."
It was a crushing disappointment. Everything was going smoothly, but it was going so slowly. We'd be able to annihilate the goblin siege with FAILCANNON's fire... in perhaps three to six months' time. It was hardly an impressive inaguration. "We need water from _above_ the reactor level... Tekkud!" A flash of inspiration hit me and I ran out of the control room to catch the miner. "We've got plenty of water and all it's good for is drinking!" I grabbed some map scrolls from my office and hurriedly sketched my plan once I'd cornered him.
The drinking reservoir was in exactly the right spot. A few short cuts in the rock carved a passage from its northeastern corner down to the southern tip of the water reactors and once the wall was breached the gushing flow began inching much more rapidly down the rows of pumps.
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I rushed back to the control room.
There was a flurry of excitement inside. "We're up to 1800 Urists," Lokum, the dwarf manning the power indicator, shouted as soon as I'd come through the door. "Oscillating to 1900, another reactor cell is about to turn over. What'd you do?"
"Put our wellwater to good use!" I laughed. We'd break out the finest booze to tide us over the loss of our reservoir, a perfect excuse to celebrate FAILCANNON coming alive. But there were more important and immediate concerns to focus on right now. The FAILCANNON system was complex but meticulously planned. "Checklist!" I ordered, directing everyone's attention to the words inscribed on the control room wall over the bank of levers controlling the magma.
"Ballista gunports closed, check! Main gate closed, check! The wall is secure and magma-proof." Deduk had already confirmed those when I'd ordered the drawbridge raised but it was good to make sure - having magma flow in through the ballista fortifications would make an expensive mess.
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"2200 Urists and rising!" Lokum hollered an interjection.
"FAILCANNON barrel port!" Deduk pulled the southmost lever in the bank of magma controls. "Barrel port sealed!" This was not a vital part of the new FAILCANNON, but would hopefully improve its deadliness greatly. A pair of magma-safe doors snapped shut right at the Sprinkler Head itself. This would allow the barrel of FAILCANNON to be filled completely with pressurized magma, and the entire pump stack below it as well, so that when the barrel port was reopened the gush of fire would be swift and unabated.
"2400 Urists and rising! Another reactor cell online!"
"Engage magma feeder pump!" The lowermost pump of the main magma pump stack had a separate control for its power linkage. This was to allow the system to be fully purged of magma in the event that maintenance was required; turning off the lowermost pump while leaving the rest of the stack running should in theory cause all of the magma present in the stack to be sucked out and ejected onto the surface. Although the pump stack didn't have power yet there was no need to leave the lower stack disengaged. That was for later.
"2600 Urists!" Lokum's excitement was near fever pitch; we were just one reactor cell shy now.
"Engage FAILCANNON magma pump stack," I ordered. It was a bit early for that but I couldn't help myself. The pump stacks built into FAILCANNON itself weren't powered by the water reactors, but rather by the windmills on top, and they had already been confirmed operational by a dry test earlier in the month. I could imagine them creaking to life up there now. When the fire began to flow it would course directly through to the top. Assuming everything worked. It had to work. I'd gone over every iota of the plan over and over again...
"2800 Urists! We're stable over the red line! Main pump stack is a go!"
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"Engage main magma pump stack." Deduk had been waiting on the lever and threw it immediately.
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Two floors below us the lever shifted a mighty stone gear into position. The clutch clashed, sending a shudder through the thick wooden axles and causing the churning reactor wheels to momentarily slow. A grinding clatter echoed throughout the entire hundred-level powertrain of the magma pump stack as mechanisms were thrust against each other by the force being transmitted down it. Then, in unison, the pumps began to turn.
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Pulses of glowing hot liquid fire dashed up the stack's steps, flooding into the sub-ocean channel and then spilling into the upper magma reservoir. It filled rapidly and then began ascending the second set of pumps, flowing into the nickel-floored barrel of FAILCANNON itself.
There was a fluid level indicator for FAILCANNON's barrel. We all held our breaths as it rapidly climbed to 7. "FAILCANNON fully pressurized," Deduk announced. "We're ready to fire."
I nodded. "Stand by." As excited as I was to pull the trigger, this was still FAILCANNON's first test run. I forced myself to reign in my excitement and study the system's indicators for a moment first.
"3000 Urists," Lokum announced quietly. I chuckled. There were still several reactor chambers yet to go; Old Battlefailed had overengineered their design. I could respect that. In the meantime, all of our magma systems seemed to be holding steady in their pressurized state. Our engineering was good too. FAILCANNON was fully operational.
But I couldn't quite order the barrel port opened yet, I would be firing blind and that would be irresponsible. I had focused so much attention getting this system ready that I had neglected to supervise the surface. "Stand by," I repeated. "I'm going to go topside and get Stukos' report. I'll send the final order down by runner."
Deduk grinned knowingly. I think he believed I just wanted to see FAILCANNON fire with my own eyes. That was true, of course, though not my sole or even primary reason for going topside. And I believed that Deduk would be equally happy staying below if it meant he'd get to pull the lever that actually fired this thing. We parted and I jogged to the main ramp.
The run to the surface was long. I had even considered building a secondary control room in Upper Battlefailed, just for this sort of situation, but having redundant levers controlling something like FAILCANNON was an invitation to disaster. By the time I made it to the Big Skull I was gasping and near passing out from the trip and wondering if the risk of disaster would have been worth it after all.
I couldn't take time to recover. I saw that Stukos' squad were crouched at the Big Skull's fortifications, crossbows held and attention focused in deadly earnest, and there was a steady twang-chunk of bolts being fired at the goblins below. They were at our gates! "Stukos," I managed to wheeze. "Report! How many?"
Stukos was with his men at the fortifications, but it seemed his quiver had run dry and he was just directing his lesser marksdwarves. He stood up and sauntered casually over to where I stood out of the potential line of fire. "How many in the original attacking force? We counted about forty in total, plus perhaps two dozen trolls. A small siege."
"Where are they now?"
Stukos shouldered Urlolrubal with a grin. "I imagine most of them are probably in Hell. Come, look." He motioned me over to the nearest fortification.
I stared out at the Plains of Ooze. After a moment I began to laugh. The sparse grassland was a scene of absolute carnage. Dead goblins lay everywhere, peppered with a thick carpet of crossbow bolts both broken and lodged upright in their corpses. While I'd been busy down below frantically coordinating as mighty engines of destruction were brought online, Stukos and his men had been up here steadily plinking away at the goblin horde with their trusty little weapons. "How many left?"
Stukos gestured, drawing my attention to where the marksdwarves who still had bolts were sending their shots. Two goblins remained alive... if you could call that living. They were crawling pitiably through the grass, their bodies torn and broken. They wouldn't last much longer.
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I'd got here just in the nick of time. Two live targets... I couldn't stop laughing. Eventually I had to pull out a scrap of parchment and write down my order to the control room by hand.
Disengage all magma pumps and trigger FAILCANNON barrel purge. Open the main gate and stand down. The siege is broken.
I shook my head. It had been an exhilarating ride and I couldn't feel let down by the outcome. No dwarf had died today and FAILCANNON's systems had been completely proven. That was enough for today.
Year 252, second half
The excitement of the siege at the beginning of the year, and of bringing FAILCANNON's systems fully online, the bulk of the year afterward was a lazy - dare I say, almost tedious affair. In fact, much of our activity in the latter portion of the spring involved the unforseen and time-consuming procedure of shutting FAILCANNON's systems back down again.
Literally time-consuming. It turns out that there is indeed a cost to be paid when running dwarven water reactors. As long as those infernal contraptions were chugging away all other motion in the entire region seemed to slow, as if the universe itself was laboring under the load. Tirist tells me there may never have been a case where this many were in operation at once, and in such close proximity; perhaps this is why the old Battlefaileders never actually activated the system. In any event, we turned the blasted thing on without having a convenient means of turning it back off again.
The obvious approach would be to install gates to shut off the flow of water through the reactors, stopping them dead. Would have been handy to have thought of that before I flooded the place and got them all going, alas - there was no easy way for the engineers to get in there. As a fallback, another approach would be to simply start dismantling waterwheels until the power production fell below the power demands of FAILCANNON; the system would grind to a halt from internal friction alone. But now that FAILCANNON was active I didn't like the idea of taking it offline again for so long.
Instead, Tirist proposed something called a power dissipator. An immense system of gears whose only purpose was to act as a brake, adding friction to the system whenever it was engaged but being quick and easy to disengage should FAILCANNON be needed. So for much of the spring and summer our mechanics labored to assemble the needed contraption while FAILCANNON's heart pumped away unabated and continued sapping the flow of time with its abuse of physics.
Like I said, tedium. In any event, eventually Tirist's power dissipator was complete and the water reactors were stilled.
(http://oi42.tinypic.com/15ysmja.jpg)
By this point I must admit a certain amount of stir-craziness. Lower Battlefailed is a marvelous place, an eclectic blend of haphazard design and grand architecture, but I and many of the other old-timers have been trapped down here by the hazards of our fellow dwarves' poisonous clothing and that alone made me appreciate it less. It's the oddest thing, really - I would never have expected to be so constrained by such an oddity. But while no harm comes from associating with dwarves whose clothes are soaked with toxins, the moment those toxins are washed off in a rain puddle and left smeared on the ground they become a deadly trap to anyone with poor footwear. This seems to be the only real remaining reservoir of poison left threatening us. Every few months such an accident happens and someone dies, despite my every effort to control traffic through such danger zones.
Time to put an end to it. As documented earlier in this log, I once attempted to implement a system I called "cleaning troughs" to remove this poison. Later renamed to "death troughs", to my chagrin. So, new and more elaborate methods will need to be attempted.
The problem with the death troughs was that although they washed poison off of clothed dwarves, the poison remained and affected any less-clothed dwarves who came along afterward. So any new system will need to have a way to quickly remove the poison from the place where the dwarf has been washed. My new plan is simplicity itself. There is a choke point at the top of the grand spiral ramp where any dwarf traveling to the surface, or between upper and lower battlefailed, must pass through. I plan to tap into the aquifer under the plains of ooze and use the resulting spring to create a continuous curtain of falling water across this choke point. Anyone passing through will be washed clean, and the waste water will sluice down through grates and drain into the disused shaft leading to the already-flooded first cavern layer.
Waterfall source:
(http://oi43.tinypic.com/r92yz7.jpg)
Cleaning corridor with grates beneath:
(http://oi40.tinypic.com/2zfnwoo.jpg)
Drainage, several levels below the grates:
(http://oi43.tinypic.com/v5fnmb.jpg)
No pumps will be needed, simple gravity-fed flow will keep everything running. I will, of course, be installing a gate to allow the flow to be shut off.
While on the subject of waterworks, one of the great annoyances we suffered while getting FAILCANNON running was the pitiful source of water we were tapping into down on the third cavern level. Not only is the water source down there a bare trickle, but the stack of eleven manually-operated pumps were a pain to keep running consistently - as soon as any one dwarf manning the stack needed to take a break, the whole operation was put on hold until a replacement could arrive. Since there's now ample excess power available from those water reactors, I decided to install a drive shaft and gear train to power this stack of pumps off of it as well.
This necessitated a temporary dismantling of a single segment of the main FAILCANNON drive shaft to install a gear.
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What could possibly happen during such a brief period without FAILCANNON? Ha ha!
(http://oi41.tinypic.com/1smrsy.jpg)
ARMOK DAMN EVERYTHING!
So, a brand new siege arrived the moment the drive shaft was disconnected. No matter, we closed the gates and the goblins milled about uncertainly beneath the sprinkler head with no way of breaching it. But they weren't going to die on their own, and they'd brought a squad of crossbowmen with them this time so I was reluctant to put the archers up there to deal with them alone. Not when we were so close once again to having a system to simply dump magma all over them! I had our engineers make all possible haste with getting the drive shaft reassembled - no need to hook the water pump stack up to it now, just get the thing back together with the necessary gear in place to hook things up to later.
By the time FAILCANNON was ready, alas, most of the goblin forces had retreated from their position under the sprinkler head. All that was left directly below were some trolls and a squad of macegoblins.
(http://oi43.tinypic.com/20k7vqb.jpg)
Nevertheless, it was finally time to fire FAILCANNON at its first live target! The power dissipator was disengaged, the proper sequence of levers was thrown, and the giant bone skull of Battlefailed vomited forth a beautiful spew of magma.
(http://oi41.tinypic.com/1z6f7th.jpg)
(http://oi43.tinypic.com/9bet08.jpg)
(http://oi44.tinypic.com/211te0h.jpg)
(http://oi42.tinypic.com/b71l6e.jpg)
Yes! A glorious wave of glowing orange death, sweeping out across the plains of ooze! Burn, you horrible little beasts, who would come to pillage what we have so laboriously reclaimed!
Wait... the flow seems to be ebbing.
(http://oi41.tinypic.com/23tf6uv.jpg)
That's it?
The majority of the goblin siege forces, well outside the range of the splatter of magma spread in front of Battlefailed's wall, maintained the siege and showed no signs of rushing forward to jump into the pyre themselves any time soon. FAILCANNON had, well, failed.
Partly this was due to being unable to fire earlier, when more of the goblins would have been caught. But this flow rate issue was unexpected as well. With FAILCANNON continuing to operate I took a tour of the system to see where the problem lay. Alas, it was right at the very foundation of FAILCANNON; the magma sea had vast reserves but they just weren't flowing fast enough into the bottom of the pump stack to replenish FAILCANNON's flow rate. As soon as the magma stored in the pump stack itself was exhausted in FAILCANNON's initial surge the whole operation was reduced to a trickle.
Well, then. More engineering would be needed to repair this deficit. That was fine; we are dwarves, we live for this kind of challenge. But first I needed that siege gone. I decided we might as well test out FAILCANNON's other mode of operation, switching to ocean water and quenching the magma so that we could lure a new batch of targets within range.
(http://oi39.tinypic.com/35mh5li.jpg)
(http://oi41.tinypic.com/2a0euc3.jpg)
A most impressive sight! The column of steam must have been visible for leagues all around. Unfortunately the heaps of cracked, blackened volcanic glass left in its wake was no more traversible to the goblins than the rock had been as a liquid. In the end I had to order miners to go forth and dig out a clear path for our invading guests to approach! Whereupon Stukos and his crossbowdwarves, now waiting in their perch over the sprinkler head, riddled enough of them with bolts to convince the rest to flee.
What a mess. But an educational mess, at least.
(http://oi43.tinypic.com/2zqdjb6.jpg)
And so that was the year 525, the year of Fumbling with FAILCANNON. Perhaps next year we'll finally get the ruddy thing working correctly. First, however, is an even more important and risky milestone. I need to see to it that every dwarf in this fortress gets a shower.