Bay 12 Games Forum

Winter's start

I never quite finished the events of autumn, and some things have happened that are worthwhile recording.

Firstly, Kubuk has become our first legendary citizen. I hate her. From peasant to legendary miner in two years. Nice for some.

Secondly, we had a near disaster. To avoid the massive demand on manpower we got when building the first second-level fortifications, I reduced the dimensions of the walkway around the wall to 1 tile. This may not have mattered really.

 Our assorted idiots are in the habit of walking ON TOP of the wall when moving to set up the fortifications. When you're doing that, and you set up a fortification to your left, and there's already one to your right, and the floor in front of you isn't built yet.....well. You're stuck.

 About 8 dwarves, about 20% of fortress population, managed to tree themselves with no way of getting down. I won't name names.

 Thank Armok  I actually noticed in time. By strategic suspending and unsuspending, and a single well placed stairway, we managed to free everybody.

 In other news I'm more pleased to state, our newly arrived woodcutter killed Anita Pallenberg! She was horning in on our lumbering operation (what a great word is "lumbering". Means both "collecting timber", and "very slow". It was both.) So I called out the military (currently 2 elite wrestlers and 2 normal wrestlers), drafted newbie woodcutter and Rovod, and wrote them off.

 It didn't need anyone else, "Neosen" (he's Neo's child?) gave Anita such a swipe she flew thirty feet! She didn't get up again either.

 I'd tell Neo how proud he should be, but he's currently trying to chew down the door, so I'll leave the glad news to someone else.

 And finally, I've been wondering a bit about Rickvoid. Seems he wants to work down in the tombs level. I don't quite know how to tell him that the thought of him working his trade in the resting place of our honoured dead (not that we HAVE any honoured dead. Yet.) fills me with revulsion impossible to describe. It's not that he's a bonecrafter, it's because he's him.

 However; he has entered a secretive mood, and begun a mysterious construction. It involves 2 turtle shells and some leather. Maybe he isn't a total cold-groper after all.

 I might move his living quarters down there.

 

[I was WAY ahead of you on the burial level. However, on the other stuff, we already have a skulls/bones/shells stockpile. You can see it in the screenies. Your boneworkers shop is already dug out on the screenshots. It's the room on the workshop level, fourth on the right going west from the stairs. There's some stairs been built since so it's pretty close to the skulls & bones stockpile. Of course if you WANT to work way down in the Gabbro....]

Autumn 202

 A lot of digging and building got done last season. Our wall is now completed and we are beginning to put up walkways around it to facilitate the construction of fortifications. Our central stairway now goes straight to the bottom, to the depths where dwarf was not meant to go, and it is now supplemented by secondary stairways connecting the three main levels at the ends of the corridors. We can now estimate our stone resources. We have 6 levels of Mudstone, 6 levels of Slate, and 1 of Gabbro at the very bottom.

 That means iron and coal from the mudstone, zinc from the slate, and the probability of nickel in the Gabbro. Also, the possibility of copper everywhere. The possibility of copper.

 Why is it that you can never find the right amount of copper? You're either drowning in the stuff or it's just not there.

 Incidentally, we nicked a magnetite pocket extending corridors on the residential level, so iron ore isn't going to be a problem. Fuel might be. I've got Rovod and some nameless sucker out chopping trees. I want to see how much progress we can make on clearing all the forest out from around the walls. Fun game, with Young Toby out there.

 The injured raccoon is staring at me. It's trying to make me feel bad. Since taming, the things just hang about the dining hall looking windswept and interesting. Dwarves are standing around, complaining about the lack of chairs. Fair enough, I really should put some more furniture in here. Somehow there's always other stuff to do.

 We felt secure enough in our food to plant a crop of pig tails a couple of seasons ago, so I had a farmer's workshop and loom put up. We don't have a clothier yet but no reason we can't make the cloth. I don't want us to wind up with our nuts scraping the earth like those guys in Nist Akath. This led to dwarves wandering out to COLLECT the phantom spider silk.

 Well, I almost had a heart attack when I found out, but apparently nothing bad was happening, so I let it be.

 Then I get the word that our brewer (that's his actual job) is cancelling his silk-gathering on account of Werewolf.

 He's not far outside, but Young Toby is close. I use the mystic dwarven discipline of [TOO HORRIBLE TO TRANSLATE] to draft our hapless zysmologist and station him within the fort, also mustering the other founders to rush to the gate.

 Well, actually I run around screaming "Code T! Code T!" until Kubuk slaps me and gets me to explain.

 Anyway, our brewer makes it within the fort with Young Toby in hot pursuit.

 Young Toby is not one of nature's evolutionary survivors. He takes a jolt from a stone-trap, then crawls out BACKWARDS, prowls to the left a little, and runs right into another.

 He pulled himself out in front of the gate, and passed out right as we arrived. Anyone could have got the kill, but it was Ubid first on the scene, and Ubid for the win.

 Drama over. Of course, another werewolf was sighted far to the south only minutes later. We're calling this one "Anita Pallenberg" for reasons that escape me.

 Oh, and we never got to do anything with Ol' Toby's bones. We shall see what happens now.

 Shortly afterwards, our friends the merchants return. Thanks to my strategic brilliance in never designating a finished goods stockpile, most of the stuff we piled up for the Elves is still there. We also have more of Ubid's crafts, including a rather superior earring, and Rickvoid's totems.

 We sold Ol' Toby's skull and a whole bunch of stone rubbish (sorry Ubid) for booze, meat, barrels, some bins of cheap leather, and  a selection of the cheaper metal bars and ores.

 And One Log.

 Stupid merchants.

We're no sooner done with the trading than I get the word that Neo has risen from his bed and is moaning on the floor of his room. He is frothing and screaming and passing out every few seconds and generally making a complete Elf of himself. He appears to be trying to leave his room and fetch something, but between the "Missing Leg" thing and the "Fainting with the pain" thing, he's moving at about 6 feet per week.

 "It's a possession" said Rovod gloomily.

 I squinted. "What, the chest he just fell over? Yes, that's his. But I hardly see how relevant the statement-"

 "I mean he has been seized by an extradimensional force that wishes to manifest itself on this material plane in the form of an artifact. He has been chosen as it's creator, and he will go hopelessly insane unless he completes it."

 "Oh, a POSSESSION. Could be worse. Could be a useful mood wasted. Oh well. Just lock the door Rovod, just lock the door. I want to remember him the way he was. Stupid and useful".

 He was never going to complete anything the speed he was moving. Time to start planning his death.

 With the hamlet liason following me the whole way, I go down to the Gabbro and carve him out a 3x5 tomb. A coffin of Jet (how appropriate) is installed, and our two migrant engravers smooth the walls. We add a wooden weapons rack, in honour of his service to the community as somebody that hit trees with an axe.

 While we're about it, we carve out some more tomb spaces in the event of more cases of natural selection.

 Neo goes beserk shortly after his tomb is finished.

 One of the blacksmiths has been given the job of turning out iron armor (the second blacksmith takes over jewellers duties). We're making chain mail, helms, and shields. I've got Rickvoid on making gauntlets and leggings out of bone and shell, and our tanner is making boots and leather armour from the leather we now have. We have a barracks, a large clay room right below the surface. It features Ubid's artifact weapons rack, since that's the only other one we have. I draft our 2 trappers and a miller and set them to sparring.

 I want more recruits, but amazingly everybody is doing something useful and can't be spared. I've even got somebody making silk robes.

 Oh, dear. More migrants. Another metal crafter, a bowyer (hmmm), a milker (will be drafted), a woodcutter (oooh! Free axe!) and some farmer, peasant types. Damn. We just got the bedrooms finished for the last set.







 

If he has decent physical stats just throw him a crossbow.

One of my fortress had a "cripple" squad of dedicated marksdwarves. They were all nervous injury victims. Because they couldn't spar, they were always carrying their crossbows. Which meant they were not only the best shots but also the first troops to turn up to every battle.

Urist McDuck cancels everything: Swimming in rough wood opals, and diving in rough wood opals, and throwing them up to let them hit him on the head.

Time for an area map:



Sorry if this is too big.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention:

Ubid has been possessed by a mysterious force. He's claimed the mason's workshop, which is awkward. I'm having a second one built in case we have to lock him in, but he seems quite content with the mudstone and picture jasper he's grabbed.


Gosh, I wonder what will happen?

[Somebody else better post in this thread or I cry. And I'll make you feel bad.]

Winter

  With the city boys gone I raise the bridge. We've got a good stash of wood from the ground before the gate, and pretty much cleared all the trees for a good distance. I've completed the stone-fall line, now I want to work on more mining and building our defensive wall.

However, not two seconds after the bridge is raised than a fox dies on one of the traps! Botheration. We can't afford to waste leather or bones, so I raise the bridge to see it reclaimed. We put up a butcher's shop and tanner's shop in record time-owing to lack of cleared workshop space I actually have to site the tanner's shop in one of our new corridors. It gets torn down after the job and rebuilt in a more seemly location.

 Afterwards, I notice dwarves out in the forest. Apparently, when I gave orders for the fox corpse to be reclaimed, I gave everyone a carte blanche to pick up every damn roach corpse in the area. However, since Ol' Toby's a comfortable distance to the south, I decide to go with it and send Rovod and Neo out for more wood.

 Our anvil's looking lonely. I order a wood furnace and smelter put up. Metalworker's forge too, but none of us have metalworking. I could order someone to do it, but we've all got enough odd jobs already. I decide to wait until we get somebody new.

 While the bridge is down I'm disturbed by the sight of dwarves running off to the distant brook for a drink. We DO have a booze problem. There's so few of us with so much to do (building the wall mainly), that it's rare when one of us makes some more. We need more spare hands. I, for one, would like to get a fishing industry going. We have no shells. Again, we have to wait for more help. Hopefully we'll get some in the spring.

 Our cats have had kittens. One of these I've tied up at the gate as a lookout. The other I find, out in the forest, proudly standing on top of the grossest, smelliest, more disgustingly pretrescent pile of incarnate filth I've ever seen. They looked like dead rats  in the same way that a zombie resembles a human. I'm informed that these were demon rats, and that wiping out a hive of them was not a bad thing. Even for them.

 I've already designated one of the ponds within the perimeter a drinking zone, now I order it to be used EXCLUSIVELY. I wonder if anyone will listen.

 Holy Booze! Another suicidal fox! Oh well, more leather. Another trap to be repaired. Dum dum DUM.

 Building the wall seems to be taking a whole lot of labour. Too many things are going neglected, but I'm too much of a dwarf to call a halt. We have the wall around 3/4 of the perimeter ditch now, and fortifications over the gate. I've ordered the latter to be built from Bauxite. Useless stuff.

 Oh yeah, we found some rubies in the bauxite. Wish we hadn't destroyed about 40% of them digging them out.

 A tunnel is being built torwards the brook, and a cistern being built to receive the goods, but that's a job to be done very, very carefully.

 Got to go. A raccoon just survived an encounter with a stone-fall, and now is stuck in a cage. Not ANOTHER cage we have to make---Neo!

 

AUTUMN

  Ilral, a formerly blameless if averagely death-seeking dwarf, has now decided to be named KLAR! I think he's gone a bit strange, but it doesn't bother me as long as I get to play with my mechanisms.

I have a bauxite one now. WHeeeeeeEEEeeee!

 When the first leaves began to fall we use the traditional dwarvan art of [UNSPEAKABLE] to ascertain the whereabouts of Ol' Toby. He appears to have left the area, and only foxes come gamboling across the land like little mechanisms at play. Little red mechanisms, of Kaolinite or cinnabar or bauxite.

 Or bauxite. WHEeEEeeeeEEeee!

 We drop the bridge, and I get a very disagreeable surprise when I realise the depot is no longer registering as accessable! What the Hell?

 OK. Think Daskot, think. Maybe some mechanisms would-

 Ouch. Thanks Kubuk, I needed that.

 OK. It can't be the fortifications or the traps. It's a tree. This forest is full of trees, standing around like they belong here. Some sapling as turned into a tree and it's blocked the way in.

 But which one?

 I rustle up Rovod and Neo, thrust axes into their hands, and send them stumbling out to do battle with the terrifying forest. Meanwhile, I gather up a bunch of my lovelies, and stagger out myself. We've been within this perimeter for almost six months though, this is our first time outside. I think: what would look nice out here? A semi-circle of stone-fall traps in front of the entrance.

 Although, considering we're outside, one is inclined to wonder from whence the rock is supposed to fall. I work out a modified pit-trap design that meets standard specifications. basically it's a pit-trap, only instead of falling in and landing on spikes you fall in and then have a rock land on you.

 Rovod and Neo go at those trees with commendable commendability, but they don't manage to solve the problem. The wagons by-pass our site, and a meager three merchants arrive on camels. I drag myself away from my traps in time to do some trading.

 Ghastly people. It's not only do our trade goods (Ubid's crafts, my mechanisms) not amount to much apparent value, but these idiots didn't even bring anything we might want. We finally got a piece of rope so we can have a watch-animal, an empty barrel because barrels are good, and some plump helmet. We already have plenty, but more is more.

 While I'm trading, I'm told that the trade depot is now accessible again. Sigh. I meet with some--dwarf who calls himself the liason. I WANT to ask why my companions and myself were drugged and sent here, but all this idiot wants to do is talk trade. I ask him for wood (a log bought is a log nobody got brutally and gruesomely devoured by a werewolf for, that's my motto), leather, booze, meat, lye (it's a thought), and any metal bars and ore stones they have. He gives me a list of HIS requests which I used later while in a small room.

 While we make fools of ourselves out here, the "real miners" (Kubuk and whoever is standing next to Kubuk) strike more Butinimous Coal while extending a corridor for future workshops. That's nice, but as with the limonite I don't dare touch it yet.

 The caravan leaves, to my dissappointment not meeting Ol' Toby on the way out.

As I watch them go, a raccoon jumps across a stone-fall trap I haven't had time to load yet and gets nabbed by a cage. Now we have to build another cage. Typical.