Bay 12 Games Forum

Playing the unreleased 80.03, and on every embark I end up with the regular 7 dwarves and all, but then there's 20 other dwarves there that I can't control.  Seven of them just walk around with notepads, writing down everything my normal dwarves do, including their conversations and off-duty activities, interests, political views etc.  What is that all about?

Also, while trying to level the top of the embarks volcano, my dwarfs, using the old fear mechanic put in in 40.01, came screaming in terror to my fortresses mayor, babbling something about drone flyovers and constitutional rights.  Suited dwarfs quickly caged them and sold them to the next trade caravan.  I didn't even know the AI could do that...

On the subject of the mayor, his mandates have become quite disturbing.  How do I make citizen registration chips?  In the magma smelter maybe? 

So, if the wiki is telling me what I think it is telling me, adamantine picks are the most effective weapons forgable by dorfs if you level up their mining skill before recruiting them, correct? 

Following directions from the wiki, I build the exact model for a 2 z-level pump stack, to pump from my cistern, to 1 level above my well/meeting area.  Then I let the water drain down into the well room and through a grate back into the cistern.  My goal was to make a nice mist right above the doorway to wash all my dorfs and make em oh so happy.  The holes line up from the hole in the well rooms roof to the grate right below it. 

The problem is the FUN that followed.  The pumps worked great, just as the wiki said they would and down came the water, it just didn't go through the grate in the floor, at least not all of it, instead it immediately began flooding my well room.  My dorfs appreciated the much needed bath, but that wasn't exactly what I had in mind. 

Is the water splashing off the grate or sometin, is that even possible?  Here's the setup, its stupidly simple:



EDIT: also, does anyone know if pump operators work until they starve/dehydrate, because they never go to drink or eat that I can see, I always have to stop the pump to get them to eat.

Looked this one up a bit, found two possibilities:
1. building destroyer (ruled out - none on the map besides mamuks, which are all accounted for in a pasture)
2. tantrum (there is a raised gate and two forbidden doors between my people and the door in question)
3(?). ghosts maybe? (I checked with the kill command, I've put to rest all the ghosts with slabs)

The door, pictured below, has vanished 3 times from the same spot, granite doors, the only correlation left is that all 3 times I have made the door forbidden to keep sieges out.  Though when they disappear there is no siege.



I'm about to put my artifact door there, but I want to be sure it isn't going to vanish as well.

Disclaimer: I'm a terrible artist, so while I'll be posting cropped screenshots and such, drawn pics will be sparing.

About: New to dwarf fortress, and though I thought about writing on my vanilla dwarf fort, it was the orc fort that really got me writing.  If you'd like an orc named and brought into the story leave a post with a nickname and a short description.  With me being newish I'm sure I'll need a regular pipeline of new characters to replace the dead ones .  One final thing, this first post is a bit long, I wanted to have something substantial to show before I posted.  Regular updates will be a bit shorter.

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Escape

I break from the children and their petty "civilization", they have been corrupted by our weaker neighbors, too reliant on their cursed magic, and preach too loudly of peace. 

They tossed me into a pit for my words, but six loyal to me slaughtered the guards and brought me up, and we escaped the capital with nothing but what we could carry. 

We slaughtered a caravan of gnomes a day outside the city, and loaded a wagon with their corpses; food for our journey.  The two Snaga who have come ride behind me, carving knives and spear tips from their bones.  They will do well to help secure our new legacy, for despite being halfbreeds, I see clearly how they have embraced the blood line of their fathers.

Stealth in our escape was not my goal.  Let them follow the trail of blood and bone, and the whispers of what I am building for my race.  Let them hear, and know where to find me.

We shall not wait for the call to war, we shall bring the war to these lands and take our place as masters of the realm. 

I am Shakguul Bloodborn, of Orc.

1st Granite, 130, Spring - Arrival

We stopped the wagon a week outside the capital.  A cliff to our west, and a small brook running through sparse woods to the east.  It will do for now.  Bagro, who I was told engineered my escape, has stepped up to manage the camp while we build fortifications.  I have taken the opportunity to stretch my legs, and with another skilled hunter, Morgol, have begun gathering meat for the coming winter.

25th Limestone, 130, Early Autumn – Sinmourned Fort

   I burst into my scribes study, cracking the poorly made door as I slammed it shut.  "Children, bone setters, farmers!"
   Bagro set the finger-bone pen on an ink stained square of leather and stood to face me, but said nothing.  His long braided gray hair rested on his moss green shoulders.  Sunken russet eyes looked up at me.  He was infuriatingly calm, his weathered hands resting on his desk.
   “Three warriors.  That is what I have to work with.  It is not even enough to begin raidin-.  What?!”  Bagro was staring at me strangely.
   “I've worked with the masons this morning.  Work has already begun on a barracks and training grounds.”  The door behind me creaked, then snapped off its hinges and slammed to the floor.  Bagro continued unperturbed.  “A trainer has also reached the brook with a pack of dire wolves and a mating pair of war mamuk.  He should arrive by nightfall.  I've sent Morgol to ensure he arrives safely.”
   We stared at each other for a long moment, until one of the children ran past the now open doorway.  I grabbed him by the back of the shirt, pulled him into the room and pointed at the shattered door.  “Clean that up!”  I dropped the boy and stormed out of the room.

2nd Hemetite, 131, early summer – The Raid

I surveyed the fort wall and the river just beyond.  Down by the water a large portion of Sinmourned had gathered to celebrate the walls completion. I swore I even caught sight of Bagro down there, grinning?  We were 45 now, and growing as news spread of our separation from the capital.



Two children had begun brawling on the rivers muddy banks, then two adults, and I knew we would have to soon put up a blood bowl and a proper mead hall.  It was then, as my thoughts trailed off on future plans, that the sudden sharp shrill of a bird came from the woods to the north; just ten yards from where my people gathered at the river.

A moment later the forest came alive with the singing of metal as thirteen armored elves appeared.  Each carried a buckler and a sword that danced through the air.  I whistled for my personally trained raiders as I spotted the squad coming out of the fort on patrol.  But I knew it wouldn't be enough.

I joined the squad as they reached the gate and we raced to the river.  Once there I stopped, caught hold of Bagro, and shoved my scimitar into his hands.  “don't let them scatter, I don't care if they use rocks, get them to the front.”  He nodded and raced to catch anyone heading back to the fort.

Fear is not something I am used to, but nevertheless when I charged the first elf I saw, weaponless, I felt my stomach turn.  The feeling soon passed though as I launched myself into the air, screaming.  These were not elven rangers or patrols.  They wore the engraved mithril armor of the elven bladedancers. 



I felt, distantly, the misleading sting of a dozen deep cuts across my arms, and then I was on top of the elf.  I slammed my helmet into his unarmored face as I brought my right knee down over the elves sword arm.  I jerked up on the forearm and spit blood into his eyes as I relished the sweet sound of his arm snapping. 

The bladedancer didn't even seem to notice.  With blinding speed he stabbed the sharp tip of his buckler between my ribs, over and over, until the buckler became stuck.  I roared with pain and brought my hands down to crush his throat.  I squeezed with all my strength, lifted his head up by the throat, and bashed his head back down onto a rock.  His skull cracked and he was finally still. 

As I got to my feet, still enraged, I noticed I was the only one of the squad still alive.  Only two elves lay still, the other eleven were coming at me fast, their blades a blur.  I ripped the buckler from my ribs and leapt onto the closest elf.

Only after I'd caved his face in with my fists did I notice that I wasn't dead.  Looking around I saw a mass of 40 orcs ripping the other ten elves limb from limb.  For their part, none of the elves screamed or begged.

Bagro had come through.  He'd also paid for it with his head.  When the count was done, we'd only lost our small squad, and Bagro.  Five orcs.  Not one of the workers that had swarmed the elves had fallen.

I remembered my earlier conversation with Bagro, and his reaction.  I think he'd been trying to tell me something about those that have joined Sinmourned, but I hadn't been ready to listen then. I'd wanted soldiers, not farmers.  Now I realized that soldier or farmer, it didn't matter.  I had orcs.

I grinned, and watched as a growing pile of mithril arms and armor took shape by the forts entrance.

So, all kinds of new stuff is happening now that I have my first fort that's lasted a few years(yes i'm very new to DF), and yes I used the search but didn't find much on it.  Anyways, a dwarf child got a mood, made a mud scepter then went berserk.  Now a second child has a mood and is making who knows what with cloth and mudstone(wtf is he making??), but my dwarfs are all super happy to the point where its almost creepy, the child going berserk really surprised me.  Are children more prone to go insane after moods or was I just unlucky?

EDIT: lol, ok, so apparently he made a mudstone encrusted artifact....sock.  Not a pair of socks, just one sock, encrusted with mudstone.

Apparently he couldn't handle the pressure of leadership and jumped down the well, now he's stinking up the meeting hall, the bastard.  Anyway to get him out or stop the miasma from coming up, i mean, short of pumping out the water beneath.