Bay 12 Games Forum

or you could arm your guard with bone, feather wood, or adamantine crossbows, or adamantine hammers if you don't care about their combat capabilities: these will make beatings relatively harmless, largely preventing the arrest spiral in the first place.

So, the idea for driftwood would be something like this...
Driftwood: Gathered with a special order (orders, refuse, dwarves gather driftwood: off by default).  Gathered to wood stockpiles that will accept driftwood as an "additional option" (like empty cages/traps are an option for animal stockpiles).  Workshops gain the following reactions: Make Ash (Use Driftwood) and Make Charcoal (Use Driftwood) at the Wood Furnace and Make Driftwood Crafts at the Craftsdwarf's Workshop.  Seeing as they're a bunch of lousy hypocrites who won't even take back what they just traded you, Driftwood is probably not any more elf-kosher than regular wood... though as it doesn't imply tree-felling, perhaps they would accept driftwood crafts?  Of course, they get upset at technicolor underground giant mushrooms as much as their precious trees, so perhaps not.

What you need to do is drop him onto a cage trap or such to transport him inside your fortress (you'll have to stun him somehow, or web the cage trap if vampires are nostun.  I've never had one, so I'm not sure).  Uncage him in your monarchal quarters/Arena of Doom and see how he does against captive megabeasts, semimegas, FBs, and sieges.

If he does well, you have an immortal monarch with no earthly needs and no desire to make mandates -- just an unending thirst for blood and no particular care who the donor is.  That should please Armok.

Heh... Thank you, I consider that a high compliment.  Fiction-based precognition (Plotcognition?) comes from years of consuming genre media, years of writing, and years as a dungeon master (which is sort of like writing) resulting in having an instinct for how a story goes together.  I'm pretty good at picking out twists and turns in most media by now, but not perfect, especially on details rather than broad strokes.

Also, it's sometimes harder to predict bad works than good ones.  A bad work might be formulaic, but also probably doesn't set up or foreshadow what twists it does have, leaving me without the tools of my divination.

~~~

Left in the brewstery, we've got Brewster himself, the depressed ex-military dwarfette Norede (Ex military?  Means to me she's not on board with the current ruling junta, or she'd be off duty military at worst), the feisty dwarfette Esmar (Assuming we can, as Brewster suggested, catch her on her good side, she's likely to be part of any underground activity if any of the patrons are), Razor (Asleep or nearly so, though) and... Pipe-smoking dwarf?  No mention was made of him having left the scene, but we don't have his name so he might not be tracked.

We've got 20 coins and no perceivable way to earn more... but the cheap drinks are only three coins (assuming Brewster will take the foreign money at that value), and we've got more prospects here than back at the room we claimed.  The fire we set, then fled, might have alerted the authorities to the fact that the room's been used more recently than our map was made, so going back there may get us caught.

I suggest we have another drink, and maybe buy one for each of the two remaining dwarfettes, which happen to be the remaining sociable, conscious patrons as well, before chatting with them. (If we do that, we'll be down 9 coins instead of 3, but possibly cheer up Norede a little and start out on Esmar's good side).  If Pipe-smoking Dwarf is still here, we might want to have our own pipe visible (say, on the table) while we chat with the remaining conscious patrons.  We may not have anything to smoke, but we can still send a signal.

Best case scenario, one or both of the Dwarfettes or a present Pipe-smoking Dwarf knows something about opposition to the junta and is willing to help us by giving us a place to hide/sleep and maybe some sort of working arrangement.  Worst-case scenario, Pipe-smoking Dwarf is gone because he was an informant for the Warden, and he's ratting us out.  In which case we ABSOLUTLEY want the remaining patrons on our side so one or more of them can stick up for us and, as a fortress resident, inform any guards that we're a friend/relative/other known entity.


As a side note, the earring we've got is worth at least 10☼ if it's no-quality junk, or up to 120☼ if it's secretly a masterpiece.  Probably safe to assume the former, but no matter the price, getting it converted to local money might be good, as our foreign copper coins would be a dead tell should we need to engage in economic activity somewhere less friendly than the Brewstery.  It also means that if Brewster doesn't care for the foreign copper, we have enough (indivisible, I might add) value to barter for three drinks.

Do you have a monarch?  If no, can you get one?  If yes to that, do you have rooms prepared?

Zoos (if designated as a room from a built cage) cause the same problem as statue gardens.  If you don't make the cages rooms, though, it should be fine.

How's your stockpile situation?  being right next to the main stairwell, this strikes me as a good place to heap stone if you're not quantum piling it and don't have a stone pile next to your masons yet.  It doesn't make use of the engravings, but then what does?

Quote from: Tevish Szat on January 30, 2013, 05:28:44 pm

As long as the Pipe Smoking Dwarf isn't an informant of some sort, we'll be fine.  And if he is, there probably won't be trouble unless an underground member speaks up right here and now.

If he speaks up, and manages to get away that is. If he does, we can always gather some dimble cups, blood or other colorfull substances and die our hair. We won't have any trouble hiding our identity ourselves; we simply pick the snot out of our beard.

Edit:

Quote from: Tevish Szat on January 30, 2013, 05:28:44 pm

I say we tell a... colored version of our history.  Clearly, we're the only survivor of our old fort, and that's a story worth telling.

Won't that reveal that we're migrants? I mean, we need to stay out of slave labour.

The woman we almost robbed deduced we were a migrant, and seemed to consider being found by the authorities to be a non-issue.  I don't like it, but at least 'round these parts, being a known migrant is more likely to help us than hurt us: individuals will assume we're faction-undecided, should factions exist.

Plus, the way the barman introduced us, all we need to do is clean our beard to be 'disguised' -- which we should get around to doing sooner rather than later anyway.

So, it would be possible to build a fortress specifically to survive untouched while piping Clowns to the outside?

I think my dwarves may just have to take up a new mission as carnival barkers.