Bay 12 Games Forum

The Spire has been reclaimed. Gonna start on the writeup now.

Also, geez, three posts by me in a row .-.  Where did everyone go?

@Dolosus, Biggerfish, Aldraglienon:

I will probably do a second succession fort after this one, since I had a lot of fun running it (even though I was kinda on-and-off about it, lol -- I'm just proud I stuck with it for the duration) and I'm still not really satisfied with the story, hahaha (in particular, I think the Royal Mary Sue Archivist still has a few more tricks up her sleeve). I won't directly transfer the current turn list in that instance or accept pre-emptive signups, but I will give priority to people who were waiting for a turn here once/if the new fortress starts and signups are open.

Well, it isn't really giving up so much as trying to see if a tiny group of half insane dwarves can kill a Greater Spawn.

I'm guessing His Gaudiness is among the dead by now?

Surprisingly, His Gaudiness is not only alive, but was remarkably-unfazed by the massacre and is proving quite helpful as an impromptu mason/stonecrafter. Unfortunately, his mental state is steadily deteriorating, and he probably won't be able to live without his precious fully-engraved, gold-statue-bedecked dining room for much longer before his psyche disintegrates entirely.

Sadly, had I finished that magma-mist generator hallway the banshees may have been a non-issue.

:V Excellent, we can now pretend this was your fault even though it's actually mostly mine and also kinda Taupe's


E: I keep trying to find a dwarf to sacrifice in order to dig a tunnel for the demons to escape, but all of the dwarves I keep trying to volunteer for the job are doing stupid crap, like conducting meetings or being stuck in a Pickup Equipment task that they apparently have no interest in actually completing (seriously, he's just standing there in one spot doing nothing even though he's the task active for a few days, and won't respond no matter what I do). This is extremely frustrating.

E2: Our dwarves seem to really want to be outside for some reason, just as I'm getting ready to loose the demons. They don't even have jobs -- they're just hanging around outside.

Quote from: Aldraglienon on November 07, 2015, 11:28:06 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on November 07, 2015, 10:46:41 pm

tbh as long as we're safe from banshees I could frankly not give less of a shit about the rest of the continent and their "right" to not having their faces be eaten by flying mutant dwarves

Wait a minute, so GS have wings and or can levitate? ...Everything not protected by several meters of rock is really really screwed now.

Well, at least we're getting a front seat to the end of the world. I'll bring the popcorn...

oh, wait I'm dead... someone else is going to need to bring popcorn my ethereal fingers have trouble picking stuff up.

Well, they are hostile to both banshees AND normal spawn, and both those civilisations are much, much closer than the dwarven ones. The way I see it, this actually was a great military move to cripple our opponents.

Assuming the banshees won't singlehandedly stop the apocalypse, considering that I accidentally made them too strong (although that's really only with bows, and their scream is useless against the Spawn despite the fact that I obviously made them able to let it off too quickly) and the Greater Spawn much too weak (I think if I ever use them again I'll give them a 50% size increase and a werewolf-style resistance to most materials). There's a story idea for ya -- the despised species heading off the end of the world and becoming heroes.

I think after I install the lever to properly release the demons I'll leave them in for a bit on the off chance that a stray migrant wave comes in, since we desperately need new blood in here. If a banshee wave comes, I'll simply flip the lever and let them out, although I doubt the demons will be able to fend off more than one or two sieges for us.

On that note, construction on the release lever has been started. Once I've finished that and my little project to reclaim the Spire, I'll start on the writeup and pass the save off to the next player that's up to the challenge. We are currently in mid-spring.

I just want to say, this recent turn of events REALLY reminds me of deathgate.

Lets not end up like deathgate did.

Please.

Never read much of it. What happened with Deathgate and why do I need to avoid it?

What's worrying me right now (besides the fact that our remaining dwarves are one unpleasant odor away from going Higurashi on each other's asses and a single FB coming in through the second cavern layer would be all it takes to obliterate us) is what will happen when we run out of demons to protect us from the banshees. Once I set the demons free, we will basically be completely-isolated from the surface world, with no new migrants being able to come in barring a miracle. In other words, each successive banshee siege will easily be able to knock out all of our remaining dwarves with a single wave of screams, which will become a huge problem once the demons are no longer able to evict them for us while everyone's twitching. I'm seriously debating just leaving the demons to stew in our old fort for the time being and instead attempting to rig up some sort of pressure-plate-operated contraption to kill banshees for us while our population sleeps off the scream; it must be entirely-automated, require minimal upkeep, and be nearly-100% effective at keeping banshees out of the fort, as even if our dwarves are conscious enough to fight, all of our weapons and armor are still stuck in the old fort.

I woke up at about 5am this morning and realised, with terrifying clarity, that I had volunteered to attempt to save a fortress literally filled with demons, whose surviving population consists of about a dozen dwarves in various states of abject misery and who lack anything resembling the skills I need at the moment, all at what I'm pretty sure is single-digit FPS.

All of our old facilities are obviously inaccessible, so I'm currently in the process of getting basic food production restarted -- I am 99% sure I've sealed the clowns out of the second cavern layer, so I'm using that to gather plants from for the time being until I can get plump helmets going again. The passage up to the farming level is about halfway done. Once that's complete, I'll divvy up the jobs properly (currently I have basically everyone doing everything as needed) and select which lucky dwarf will let the demons out into the world

The good news is that there's enough umined stone around the Spire for me to safely block off the hallway to the top with a controlled cave-in without exposing our dwarves to carnage, so there's that. We should be swimming in adamantine trinkets once I get everything else done.

I'll wait until I finish everything to start posting writeups.

Quote from: Mr Frog on November 05, 2015, 01:43:45 am

My current concern is banshees, because with the numbers we have and the numbers they have a single siege will be enough to paralyse our entire fort.

From what I understand, the demons do not have access to the outside. Is the outside otherwise safe at the moment? because if so, I might be able to send a sacrificial dwarf out on a suicide mission to manually... er... lower the drawbridge. So to speak. That will take care of any invaders.

Also fwiw I think the Greater Spawn are actually quite fragile -- they're glass cannons, with teeth and claws that can slice through iron but relatively little endurance.

Yes, apart from the potential ambushes and the mist, the outside is currently safe. Unleashing the demons was my intention, but someone kicked the lever too soon, before we could unjam the southern gate. You could dig to the outside and land one square south of the bridge to deconstruct it with a sacrificial lamb, that way he wouldn't be exposed to sneaky kobolds or weather. This is probably our best (and only) chance of dealing with invaders. the banshees will die to the demons, or kill them. If migrants arrive, they'll be morphed and hopefully lower the number of greater spawns over the season.

Regardless of what kills what, unleashing the demons is something that should be done sooner than later. Once banshees arrive... it'll be too late to do anything.

As for greater spawn beeing fragile, I also noticed that. The normal spawns seem to wrestle things slowly, but may be tougher. The greater spawn died en masse to their babies.

I think all this goes to show just how naive I am when it comes to judging enemy power levels. For example, banshees were supposed to be a mild irritant, as opposed to the possible death knell of the entire fucking fort :V  If I ever do a succession fort with them again I'll probably give them a longer window before they start to scream.

---

The current plan for the fortress is that I will take a short turn of my own in order to hopefully re-establish a stable living situation for our remaining population. My objectives are, in roughly-descending order of priority:

• Unleash the Greater Spawn into the world at large so as to serve as our first line of defense
• Regain access to what little of the farming level I've managed to stake out and restart farming operations
• Secure the Spire as per Taupe's suggestion
• Produce adamantine statues/tables/whatever the fuck and install them in a new dining hall to hopefully bliss our remaining dwarves out enough for them to not murder each other

Once these objectives have been accomplished, I will hand the save off to the next player, who will pick up where I left off. Quick word of advice: DO NOT DIG OUT ANY WALLS.

E: If all else fails, we will have managed to completely-pooch this site to the point where a reclaim isn't even feasible, which is an accomplishment I guess. Also, Aldraglienon is dead.

Are there any weird access points to the second cavern layer that I don't know about? Because I managed to completely seal it off from the central staircase. We might be able to use that for food, and hopefully if we manage to get a really fucking good dining hall going we can prevent the remaining 10 or so dwarves from descending into a tantrum spiral.

E: This is all hypothetical; once we work out an actual strategy I (or one of us) will do an actual playthrough to see if we can salvage it.

E2: Okay, so I somehow got the farming area secured (the spawn buggered off for some reason). I now deem this fort "salvageable". If all else fails, we can start from here. Gonna keep going later, my comp is struggling to run this thing (you guys made a mess).