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PROFILE - SAMANTHA FISHER

Born under mysterious circumstances, she was initially just another face in the first waves of migrants at the Project, back when it was merely called Growlwork.  Illegitimate children of the world were many in these troubled times, and she was no exception.  With no one to teach her the skills of life, she made up her own schooling, and succeeded at it better than most.

Things took a turn for the worse when a few weeks later, the fellow dwarf Litast Flukebolted was found in her bedroom, white as a ghost, and completely drained of her blood.

Immediately, suspicion arose in the fortress.  There had been no witnesses, and no one knew how to deal with a blood-sucker.  It was initially dismissed as a fluke, hopefully nothing more than a supernatural happenstance, maybe even an accident.

This was a grave mistake.  She silently killed sixteen more dwarves before we took drastic measures.

Suddenly, it was declared that all citizens were barred from their bedrooms.  They were to sleep in a communal bedroom from now on, under watch from the militia at all times.

Not even that worked.  Becoming hungry again, Samantha casually stepped in one night, sucked a seventeenth dwarf clean of his blood before the entire militia's eyes, and left, with no one batting an eye about it.

That was enough.  Besmar Riddlebanners, expedition leader and Head Honcho of the fortress, implemented a last-ditch effort.

She ordered the construction of the Vault of The Forgotten.

A carefully selected handful of dwarves worked on the project in complete secrecy.  A door was placed, and promptly barred from entrance by any and all dwarves.  All but one.  The very next day, it was announced that Samantha had been drafted into the militia.  She was sent to patrol that very new section of the fortress immediately.

Not wanting to break her cover, and as expected from Besmar, she obeyed.  As she reached the dead-end of a corridor, a drawbridge promptly rose behind her, and sealed her away.

Meanwhile, Besmar renamed the vampire to the community.  We called her Samantha Fisher, in inspiration of a legendary thief from human mythology.

Over the months, Samantha became quiet, almost unheard of... only for her to strike again.  A thundering noise filled the fortress, profound and unsettling.  Citizens and visitors alike keeled over in pain, their movements nearly slowed to a halt.  Production in the fortress ground to a standstill.  Getting anything accomplished had become impossible.  It was as if time itself had stopped, the fortress stuck into a molasses of lethargy.

We all knew it was because of her.  Immediately, someone crawled to the lever opening the drawbridge keeping her sealed, and right away the spell vanished, leaving us all to catch our breath.

By the time we had come back to our senses, she had killed three dwarves, and was now standing among us with a huge, proud grin on her face.  We couldn't have shoved her back into her Vault any faster than this.  This time, we did not put up a drawbridge, but a solid wall behind her.  Meanwhile, in the workshops, she'd left an artifact of the highest quality.

Samantha's mental health deteriorated as the years wore on.  A vampire was immortal.  Stuck in her little cell, she became bored out of her skull.  Her initial complaints turned to desperate pleas for help, apologies, and promises.  And then, some years later, it had all turned into a constant, pained wailing, one that chilled the bones of whoever passed by the door to the Vault.

Unfortunately, we had to send more dwarves into this despicable oblivion.  Infected werebeasts such as Poor Bastard 1, Poor Bastard 2, Fucking Werething, Mammoth Tank, Buffalo Buffalo, and Like A Bos.  Unlike Samantha, they all took their fate with quite, solemn resignation.

It was a relief to activate the pumps of Project Superbowl II.  The rumble of the pumps drowned out the wails of Samantha, and she was never heard from again.  Rumor has it that she is still in the bowels of the fortress, forced to live her immortality in a tiny cell that no one shall ever find.

z72.

Down there is a piece of solid rock that I hollowed out to turn into a clean water reservoir.  The well dips into this.

08 - kek. Do goblins often dodge through walls, even with just 1 weapon per trap?

No one could escape the final design.  The first iteration had grates, in an attempt to spread blood around, but physics turned out to work differently than in 40d, and the addition of trolls as building destroyers made the thing too time-consuming to maintain.

Interestingly, some goblins could dodge the traps forever.  I had to send the militia in there to finish off the stragglers!

11 - Yeah, it's only most of the mountain. FPS?!?!?

When all switches are off, I can cruise at a comfy 20-ish FPS, from memory.  If I activate the Project, the FPS goes down to 5.

It took a year to do.  And it is complete, at last.

My first shot at Project Superbowl had been a structure a few Z-layers high, set around a magma pipe.  I only realized much, much later into the project that I had grossly mis-designed the structure, and it was far too ugly and ill-shaped to be looked at.  In disgust, I abandoned the fortress.

With a renewed vigor, I set out on a bigger, better version.

This should do.

And if it doesn't, I took pictures.

Happy visiting.

Project Superbowl II has been completed.

Commentary coming over the week...

Two dwarves were unlucky enough to get bitten by a werebison.

So I did what any sane overseer would do.

I locked them both into a vault-prison, and sealed the wall behind them.

Sure enough, on the next moon, both of them turned into werebisons, sealing their fate.

The first one shall be remembered under the moniker of "Buffalo Buffalo".  His compatriot, visibly more muscular, was named "Like A Bos".

One of my oldest dwarves, Mammouth Tank, has died.

He was among the first waves of migrants at the fortress, back in the 500s.  As the fort was struggling itself to greatness, a weremammoth bit him in the arm, irreversibly infecting him, and rendering him into a danger to the rest of his brethren.

Quietly, he was led to the Vault, on the pretense of a guard duty.  A drawbridge raised behind him, and it remained so, sealing him away for all eternity.

Month after month, he transformed into a weremammoth, and back into a dwarf, never experiencing hunger, or thirst, or exhaustion.  A man of simple tastes, he spent his time simply wandering the surface of his entombment, and admiring the craftsdwarfship of the drawbridge between him, and civilization.  Not once was he heard complaining.  Not once did he throw a tantrum.  He remained calm and peaceful - unlike the vampiress in the next cell over: the vile, cunning, reality-breaking Samantha Fisher.

And then, in the spring of 601, he lied down, and at last went to sleep, forever.  He died as peacefully as he had lived, after living one hundred and sixty-six years.  Stoic, never breaking.

A monument was erected in his honor, and placed next to the memorial dedicated to the first werebitten dwarf of the fortress: Poor Bastard 1.

Consider this.

I placed a pressure plate inside a cistern, and set it to trigger once magma touches it.  I linked this pressure plate to a gear assembly, which in turn is linked to a screw pump elsewhere.

I want the gear assembly to start off disengaged.  This way, the screw pump will activate when magma touches the pressure plate, instead of the opposite.

To that end, I linked the same gear assembly to a lever, and pulled it.  My understanding is that then the pressure plate, once pushed, will keep the mechanism engaged.

Makes sense?  That's gonna work?