Bay 12 Games Forum

My legendary bone carver just made a giant mole bone crossbow called Ziksisäkil, or "The split point". That ought to be good.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Sastred Ad, one of the sharpest minds at the fort, is at the library, pondering his favorite subject: foraging behavior. He has already reached "Dabbling" rank at Geography and Critical Thinking... 
We also have a visiting scholar, who on her part is pondering the mysteries of surveying. I think she already my fort earlier, that time leaving behind an amateurish, self-indulgent autobiography.

I'm trying to get the two quires written by our own scholars ("A Meditation on the Dwarves" and "The Princess of Sun and the Universe") bound into books, but they seem to be perpetually checked for a "Store item in location" task that never completes. 

In other news, I seem to have embarked on a site with no source of goblinite, which is kind of boring, especially since the wildlife tends to be giant flyers (bushtits, mantises, etc.) hovering way out of reach my militia. Of course, there's a couple of forgotten beasts in the caverns, but they tend to bring their ‼Fun‼ in too large packages for the dorfs to handle...

Drained my only skilled mason of blood, did you? 
Fine. Enjoy your new residence without doors or furniture.
But hey, at least the ceiling grate gives you unlimited access to the rain of fetid filth!

Tangentially related:

"The Terror of Vomit", an exceptional crayon drawing of Ngopex Rushan Mothi the Forgotten Beast.

This item is an exceptionally designed image of the Forgotten Beast Ngopex Rushan Mothi and a dwarf in crayon by "Toady One" Adams. Ngopex Rushan Mothi is striking a menacing pose. The dwarf looks terrified. This artwork relates to the Rampage of the Forgotten Beast Ngopex Rushan Mothi in The Princess of Night in 136.

Lessons learned the hard way:
- If you put the levers controlling pump station access and pump gear assembly, respectively, next to each other, do not confuse them while filling your cistern. Muddy water in the dining hall leads to Fun.
- People will find a way to drown in the cistern. Plan accordingly.

1) Does the world keep on evolving simultaneously as you play or is the update to world history/Legends-mode made between every embark and abandoning/wipe out of a fortress/Fun?

Judging by the facts that
- the outpost liaison sometimes brings tidbits of information on the world, such as who replaced whom as a baron/king/whatever or which settlement was raided by goblins
- I've got a migrant in Sastres Anan who suddenly became a baron of a different site(!)  (Great. Now I have two barons, and the second one is a lover of flutes and figurines...  His wife is a legendary engraver, so I dare not risk an Unfortunate Accident™ to take care of him, lest she go insane.)
- I suddenly have human neighbors that are at war with my parent civ (They weren't there when I started the fortress.)
I'd say that yes, the world lives on outside your fortress as you play.

What I really like is the option to retire your fort, so it stays active after you deem it "complete". Really adds to the incentive to tame wild animals, for example. Since your civ retains that knowledge, you might embark, or at least trade for, exotic beasts like ostriches or cave crocodiles. Plus, if you keep building successful forts, you may actually increase your civ's size and power in the world.
If you managed to hit an iron-rich area, you might also get iron anvils if you previously had none.^[verify?]
The only down sides I've noticed are that sometimes your friendly neighborhood goblin civ doesn't bother with abductions, sending a full army instead (though this is supposedly fixed in the current version?), getting that damn extra baron, and the fact that if you embark somewhere with limited access to ‼Fun‼, you might not get a decent siege for many years (though there's still plenty of minotaurs and giants to go around in the uncharted wilds, at least in a relatively young world.)

There's an annoying Forgotten Beast in the lowest cavern layer that keeps turning Jabberers into ‼XxJabberer mutilated corpsexX‼s, caverns into ‼caverns‼ and my FPS into XXFPS mangled mutilated corpseXX.

Operation: Seize the Surface, commence! We're walling off most of the map edges so the only way in is to go under one of the watchtowers, where Hunting Dogs are keeping guard through strategically placed floor grates. The smiths are churning out trap components as fast as dwarvenly possible, so that we can booby-trap the narrow passages as well. The only other routes in are the ones I intend the caravans to use. Those are furnished with fancy gold roads. (Show-off? Moi? Sir, I am wounded by your accusation!)

The merchants came and exchanged some steel and iron bars for our ridiculously expensive *barrel*s.

The Giant Sparrow hatched another batch of offspring.

Also, we're drowning in Ostriches! D:

In order to facilitate capturing and studying the denizens of the underground without any undue fatalities, I have undertaken what I call Project Diorite Storm. It shall employ the very earth as a weapon against the Fun Buddies living in the caverns, some of which are literally made of steel. Also they have a nasty habit of spitting globs of narcotic and/or spleen rotting agent...

Diorite Storm Block I is simply a number of free-floating 3x3x1 diorite chunks on collapsible supports, standing on the floor of small chambers connected to the cavern access tunnel. The idea is that when a FB catches a whiff of the pretty earthenware brick pillars, it will waltz right past the cage traps used for specimen extraction and go kick down the nearest pillar. At that time, a Wily E. Coyote moment occurs, as the full z-level of a diorite square, "floor", "wall", "ceiling" and all, is now supported by nothing but thin air, realizes gravity is an actual thing, and comes crashing down on the beastie. Splat.

Diorite Storm Block II ... N takes leaf from the Metal Storm weapon concept using stacked ammunition: It's four towers of similar hunks of rock as the Block I, each tethered to the bottom of the next one with a pillar. After the engineers re-arm the weapon by connecting its firing lever to the next pillar up, it's once again ready to squash stuff. As an afterthought, I added bridges around the unspent ammunition blocks to prevent anything Fun from flying up the gun barrel and freaking out and/or horribly slaughtering the loading crew.  Hitting things with it will require luring the victim into the impact area with some kind of bait, though... 
Hey, we have a bunch of spare kittens (Tame) and some cheap no-quality ropes, don't we?