I settled a fortress on a bridge, in a wasteland, near a necromancer tower (like, one region tile away). The world has no elves but seems otherwise normal. I'm using vanilla and hope to minimize exploits.
GOALS and CHALLENGES:
Feel free to suggest more, but I reserve the right to ignore them.
Create a gatehouse on the road,
ideally near the bridge, to theoretically allow the dwarves to charge tolls to passers-by. This gatehouse should include the trade depot.
Create a thriving glass industry (the
wasteland hills have tons of
red sand
and some black sand, too). Supplement this with pottery.
Find some way to require trade for good fortress function, probably involving a minimal metal industry.
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You may, of course, request dwarves.
And now let's begin. Again. NOTE: Due to aquifer issues, the first attempt at this was abandoned.
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Sandstone 17, 175
Welcome to the red desert! I'm GreatWyrmGold, your glorious leader!
What do dwarves love? Metal! But there's a bunch of problems with making metal yourself; you need to mine ore, get fuel, smelt, forge...so much work. Much easier to buy metal off of others' work. So, here's the plan. We've been told to settle somewhere in this "rocky" wasteland. I have a destination in mind:A road through the desert, between two human nations. Here, the road crosses a river just north of a small waterfall. The scenic location and hope of easy wealth will attract settlers, while the road will attract traders who will bring precious metal to us, no work required!
There's only one downside: There's this crazy dwarf nearby with a bunch of apprentices and a bug bunch of creepy servants. I'm sure we have nothing to worry about, but we're going to keep a low profile just in case.
One last thing, they say there's an aquifer here. We'll do the best we can with the wagon and what wood there is around to break through it.
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Granite 1, 176
We made it, right on time!
There's the road, a not-particularly-visible band of sand, indistinguishable from the surrounding sand. There's the bridge, made of chert blocks, and the waterfall, almost 100 yards downstream of the bridge. We park the wagon within several feet of the river's east bank and 150 feet north of the bridge. Around 400 feet east of the bridge is a hill where I think would make a good entrance. Maybe we could set up the gatehouse on the bridge and have a tunnel leading there. Meh, that's a worry for the future. Anyways, we're slaughtering the horses as soon as we have the setup--there's no grass around and we're almost out of fodder. Other supplies are low, too--four barrels and a bit of each type of alcohol, a few barrels of meat and fish, a barrel of plump helmets, some seeds, and various other supplies, including lye for soapmaking. We probably should have brought wood or stone, but it's too late now. Ah well. We're going to make a grand opening hall, twenty-five feet across and ten feet high, carved out of the sand with fine dwarvish digging! Then we'll dig down to find the aquifer and go through it. But that's the future, and this is now. Now, we need to celebrate. We'll just about finish some of the mostly-empty alcohol barrels and crack open the last cask of salted draltha spleen. Then, we must...
STRIKE! THE! EARTH!
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I'll update as often as I can play.
