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The Post Finis

   To the people of the Post Finis, there is no single word to refer to their continent, or their world; that would imply something to compare it to.  Various versions of "everywhere" or "all the land" or "all places" might be used for this purpose.
   Instead, the people of the Post Finis refer to their world-- their time and place-- by its time: after the end.


Religion in the Post Finis

   Throughout the Post Finis, there is remarkably little religious tension.  All its cultures are monotheistic; all its people assume that the god of the next culture is the same as the god of their own.  Because of that, there's no name for god-- it's just God.  (Although words for God vary, they're assumed to translate simply and literally.)
   But God of the Post Finis is not the god that readers may be familiar with.  God is largely uncaring, omnipotent but far from omniscient, and anything but benevolent.  The god of the Post Finis could be seen as the personification of Murphy's Law.  While organized religion exists, it promises to protect people from God.  Prayer is a foreign concept: wanting to attract God's attention is considered mad.
   There is no afterlife.  Death is nothingness.  Which is seen as something of a heaven.  The dead are finally out of reach of God.  Likewise, there's no belief in any sort of hell.
   Ethics and morals are believed the business of humanity, not that of God.
   Some variation exists between cultures.  For instance, the Issong believe in a sort of reincarnation, where the goal of religious activity is final death.  Rather than any arguments about reincarnation, most people just assume that the Issong reincarnate, while others don't.
   That's not to say that doctrinal arguments don't exist.  Monasteries seem to exist in part just to argue their doctrines, indistinguishable to most.  They war with each other.  Although monasteries receive financial support from local lords, and expect lip service to the superiority of their dogma, it's unheard of for secular lords to assist monasteries in religious wars.  The obverse, however, is untrue: part of the reason for the financial consideration given the monasteries is their martial support in times of need.
   Animist traditions persist in parts of the Post Finish, but these are seen as natural, rather than religious; the spirits of rivers, trees, the Pony King-- these are seen by some as real, physical beings that are worth pleasing and appeasing, and of a different domain than God.  Although these are frequently referred to as demons, particularly when they're being uncooperative, this shouldn't in any way suggest that they're seen as antagonists to God.
   Atheism is far from unknown, but generally compatible with the theism of the Post Finis.  Lip service can be paid in the absence of belief, and there's no burning at the stake for unbelievers, just the sense that they are a bit too certain of themselves, and deviant in a world where conformity is prized.


The Retainer Class

   Although there is much that varies between cultures of the Post Finis, there is much that is shared.  This includes elements of the retainer class that exists in all cultures (and is mostly portable between: a retainer of Estoria could conceivably play the role of a retainer of Nyitre).
   Is it a hereditary class?  This is a source of much confusion.  Largely, what makes a person a member of the class is the ability to act like a member of the class.  And largely, that makes it a hereditary class.  Should a peasant child take up a sword and claim to be a retainer, and somehow manage to convince others of that fact long enough to swear fealth and survive a battle, then announce his parentage, there would be arguments about his or her status.  Those arguments would be serious enough that he or she would be unlikely to remain a member of the class.  It's not uncommon for adopted children to serve as members of the class, but there's a stigma associated with even adoption into the class that encourages them to silence.
   The distinguishing characteristic of the retainer class, throughout the Post Finis, is the act of carrying a sword.  All cultures ban swords for all but retainers.  Many insist that this is the determining feature of who is and isn't a member of the class: if you are carrying a sword, you are a retainer.  It is not technically murder to kill a person carrying a sword, so long as a sword is used to kill them.  That "technically" is rather important; one's own sword leaves one vulnerable to reprisal, and retainers are not in fact in the habit of killing each other wantonly (outside of war).
   The sword is the ideal weapon of the tax collector.  It is not the ideal weapon of the battlefield.  It's not uncommon for lords to conscript non-retainers for their battles.  Sometimes, the conscripted veterans of many battles take up a sword and claim warrior status.  If they can maintain hold of their swords, who is to say they're not retainers?


Lone Wolves and Stray Dogs

   The problem with retainers is what to do with them all.
   In Estoria, customs have evolved to deal with this problem.  It's unusual for a retainer to sign a contract without undergoing a period of adventure and travel.  These young adventurers, sometimes known as Lone Wolves, are intended to perform great adventures: slay monsters, rescue those in need, right injustive, etcetera.  These adventures form their resume when they return to seek employment.  The reality of their adventures is the realization that true monsters are few and far between and that swords create injustices rather than solve them.  Still, enough lone wolves fail to return from their adventures to allow the remainder to find work.
   A larger problem surrounds those that have lost their contracts.  There are a number of ways this can happen, often through no fault of their own-- for instance, many former retainers of King Shaycob remain-- but there exists a stigma that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  Poor and hopeless, bearing a sword, the skills to use it, and little else, crime and banditry become the rule among these stray dogs.

Estoria

   There was a day when one would never say Estoria but only the Kingdom of Estoria, but that Kingdom is fallen or dissolved.  Only its duchies remain.
   The Dukes of Estoria, and many of their subjects, see Estoria as a bastion of freedom and law.  While essentially feudal, relationships are established exclusively through contracts.  The dukes own the land, they contract that land to their vassals, and their vassals contract that land to the families that work the land.  The reality of the contracts, however, is that literacy is uncommon, the contracts include unclear (a lot of "reasonable" this-and-that) language, and the Dukes have all of the wealth.  That's not to say that the Dukes are necessarily evil overlords, but the situation is far from utopic.
   Estoria exists in the northern moors.  The land is not particularly arable, and shepherding is as common as agriculture; before the Issong eradication, these moors were famous for their destriers.  The legends of Estoria hold that they have been migrating southwards over the last several thousand years, chased by a wall of ice that has frozen their ancestral homes.  Indeed, one may visit abandoned Tower Belbourne, many leagues north of any worthwhile land, and from its towers, spy yet another ruin northward.  Legends tell of fantastic palaces even further northward, miles beneath the ice.
   The Dukes of Estoria were famous for their wars and rivalries, but their contracts with King Shaycob of Lynacre lacked provisions for his death.  Smaller skirmishes persist between the dukes' vassals.


The Poisonous Castle

   Tower Lynacre, seat of the King of Estoria, was considered unsiegeable.  Despite its name, Tower Lynacre consisted of several concentric rings of walls that included a market, farm plot, and even a small copse.  Multiple towers bore engines of counter siege, and a tremendous crane was built into the central keep.  Any besieging force would need to outnumber the garrison fifty fold or to surround it for five years.
   When the Issong arrived, more than even that proved true.  Issong probes were massacred.  Underminers met their doom, encountering a web of murder holes beneath Tower Lynacre's walls.  Tower Lynacres's arrows seemed endless.  After a siege of five years, no sally to be found and no sign of hunger or disease, it was presumed that Tower Lynacre either hid vast resources in the hard ground beneath it, or that some sally point must exist hundreds of miles hence.
   And so Tower Lynacre became the first and only victim of Issong's stone poisoners.  Few of the poisoners returned from their task, though the poison can spread many yards through veins underground; no inhabitants of Tower Lynacre were seen to escape.  The Issong siege camp became the new seat of state and market, the new, strangely persist tent city that people call Lynacre, and if one stands on a hill high enough to see over its smoke and streamers, one can see the poisonous castle from new Lynacre.  Approaching it is lethal; one would die a hundred yards before reaching its walls.  The mysteries of Tower Lynacre have never been answered.


The Judges

   The Issong have never seemed very intent on exercising their dominance as they rolled over the kings of the Post Finis: modest tribute in whatever form was least offensive, be it iron, gold, ponies, or boys.  The subjects left kingless seemed, despite their lords' predictions, not to care overly by whom they were governed.  But even though the Issong Empire functions so loosely, some government is necessary.  Part tax collector, part diplomat, part general, and of course part judge, Issong's nomadic officials and their relatively small retinues are responsible for the administration of areas sometimes so vast, especially in the south's Dusts, that years pass between visits.
   Each judge is given great latitude by the Issong.  His goals are to assure at least symbolic tribute returns to the seat of government (currently at Lynacre), to maintain a retinue capable of enforcement, and to train his (for judges are almost always male) successor.  Returning personally to the Emperor, while occasionally necessary in cases of serious sedition or the death of an apprentice or master, is an embarassment.
   Within these broad demands, most judges have found themselves acting with more tact than force; the size of retinue afforded a judge doesn't permit a violent approach.  As the lords and heads-of-state deposed by the Issong empire frequently were responsible for little practical beyond the settling of disputes, these Issong administrators have had to take up the role of magistrate.  Their precise role and judgment depends on the specific culture involved.  Ahnetra, the judge of Estoria, has accepted the responsibility of settling interduchy contract disputes, but intercounty disputes are handled well by the existing administration, and so Ahnetra will probably be capable of managing all of Estoria.  In the Dusts, several judges are needed, but solely due to the area covered; retinues are nearly non-existent.  In Nyitre, several judges are needed full time for purposes of dispute resolution (as well as tax collection), and the judges are rotated not because of a lack of work for the city-state, but to prevent the appearance of impropriety.

So the humans are always getting killed and stuff.  Big whoop, I say.  They come over to Ironbrim, enjoy the necrotizing weather, kill a few zombies, make a few zombies, then go on their way, come back next year and beg for peace.  I give 'em peace, they come back the next year with another group of siegers.  Whatever.  I've got repeaters to build, designs to perfect.  Only thing the humans do is take away all that kobold and goblin (and human) crap that I don't want to have to lug down to the magma sea.  Worst thing that a siege could bring is a bunch of trash in my front yard.

Usually, they just don't stick around for very long.  This year, they're sticking around a little bit longer, and I start getting some unusual combat reports.  "The human spearman stabs the two-humped camel child in the right rear foot, fracturing the bone!"  Etc.  Which I don't notice that much, because I kind of stopped paying attention to the combat reports after the dog I chained up in the tiny huskifying chamber had babies.  (Don't worry, they're all zombies now anyways, who can predict the weather?)

But that's it!  The humans, of course, came on a bunch of horses and camels, and now their mounts are giving birth-- and the humans are trying to kill the babies.

Maybe we can work out some kind of peace deal after all.

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research on build order.  Because this stuff is tl;dr for a lot of folks, I'm going to start with the practical stuff:

Screw pumps pump in the reverse order in which they were built.  This is probably the most useful finding for most people.  By building top to bottom, you can maximize fluid throughput of a pump stack-- fluid climbing the stack will take z ticks to climb a stack built bottom-to-top, but only a single tick to climb a stack of any height built top-to-bottom.  You can also use this to make improved mist generators.  By building a climbing loop in the direction of water travel, you can guarantee that water spends a single tick in every tile of a mist generator-- to return to its reservoir tile and fall once again into the intake tile of the initial screw pump.

The gist of the theory is that buildings are evaluated from most recently built to first built.  Each building has its own routine it calls during its part of the tick.  The cool part is that all buildings do this.  By paying attention to build order, you can, for instance, pump water into a tile with a pressure plate, trigger that pressure plate with water, and then pump water back out of that tile, all in a single tick.

When you build a pressure plate before a bridge, the pressure plate evaluates its trigger conditions earlier in the tick than the bridge looks for an open signal, and so you get an open in 100 ticks.  When you build a pressure plate after a bridge, the bridge looks for the open signal, doesn't see one, and only later in the same tick does the plate send an open signal, leading to a 1 tick delay in the open signal.

There are some interesting oddities involved in this that I want to detail:

Hatches and doors don't evaluate their own open signals.  Unlike with other furniture, the opening of doors and hatches is not something affected by build order.  Instead, the triggering device opens the door/hatch itself.

The timing of a lever is determined by the 'build order' of the dwarf pulling it, not by the build order of the lever.  Mostly, this doesn't matter, because all dwarves are evaluated before any furniture is evaluated.  However, there's one very interesting experiment that I've done, that you can recreate.  Take two dwarves, and have them take turns pulling a lever to drop the other via the hatch.  One of the dwarves will consistently take 6 ticks to fall, while the other will take 7 ticks.  Why?  Because the hatch is opening before the first dwarf checks to see if he should fall, but after the second dwarf thinks about falling!  I think this is just so cool.  Dwarves, like furniture, appear to be evaluated in reverse order.

Gear assemblies appear to be unaffected by build order, but the actual delivery of power is affected by build order.  This is one of the weird ones.  If you build two gear assemblies, one built before and one after a toggling pressure plate, both gears will change from 'engaged' to 'disengaged' and vice versa on the same tick.  However, the engaged gear assembly built after the pressure plate will not actually deliver power on that tick, whereas the engaged gear assembly built before the pressure plate will!

I realize this kind of stuff isn't very interesting to very many people on the forums, but it's so interesting to me that I felt like I had to share.  If you want to about the various experiments I did to figure this out, I've been keeping an experiment journal at my wiki page.

There was some discussion in the past (here) about the possibility of using the rate of a falling creature to drive a clock.  There were some problems with implementation, however.

I have just concluded the first test of the vampire-based borg-logic drop-based delay circuit.


 ######
 #BhB<#
 ## #X#
 ## #X#
 ## #X#

...

 ## #X#
 #vb_X#
 ##^ <#
 ######

Side view: B is drawbridge, h is hatch, b is retracting bridge, # is wall, X/</> are stairs, v is a restraint, ^ is a pressure plate.  Beginning state is small flightless creature on pressure plate, retracting bridge open, drawbridges raised.

I'll list the problems with their solutions below.

1) Creatures die when they fall a long ways.
--Get a (standing) creature to wait at the bottom of the fall.  This will cushion the faller.

2) Cushion creatures set off pressure plates.
--Use a small creature then.

3) Can't get a creature to stand on one exact spot to cushion the fall.
--Attach the creature to a leash next to a retracting bridge.  Drop the leashed creature 1 z-level down the hole.

4) Dropped creatures dodge when you drop them, making the duration of fall unpredictable.
--Constrain the falling creature to a single tile.

5) Can't get a creature to stand on a single tile to drop it from.
--Use a dwarf, and use the "defend burrows" option to specify the tile you want it to try and stand on.

6) Dwarves are always eating, sleeping, drinking, etc.
--Use a vampire.

So far, there's just one test.  It worked perfectly.  The vampire fell 6 z-levels.  37 ticks after the dropping signal, the vampire set off the pressure plate at the bottom of the pit.  (6 z-levels per level fallen, except the first z-level takes an extra tick.)  Once the bridges were lowered, the vampire immediately returned to his original position.

So, is this practical?  Barely, but yes.  It's been extraordinarily difficult to institute delays shorter than 100 ticks-- if you wanted a 37 tick delay, you'd need 37 screw pumps.  To me, this is cool because it's the first (to my knowledge) perfectly timed creature logic delay, which means the possibility for a precise clock.

Can you use this to drive a clock?  My gut says yes.  I predict you would need four of these linked together to make a clock.  Would it work forever?  Not yet-- your cushion creature will eventually die of old age.  Next version, I anticipate that we will be able to tame cave blobs, which do not die of old age.  Additionally, I'm examining ways to use undead creatures to cushion the fall.  (I guess if you had a small vampire and a large vampire, you could build the pressure plate based on that and drop one on the other, which would work.)

I still have to do some testing.  There are a few things I need to make sure of:

1) The burrowed vampire will ALWAYS move to the correct spot, and not take dawdling breaks.  (Note that he is physically isolated from the rest of the fort.)

2) The burrowed vampire will never dodge off of the drop spot.  (I don't think that he can, in a constrained space, but this is something I'll watch out for.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I never bothered to replace the PET_EXOTIC tag, and so I'm pretty excited about exotics becoming tameable.

Anybody have any preferred exotics they're especially excited about?

Right now I'm looking at the raws for a giant orca.  8 times the size of an elephant, no grazer tag.  I have a feeling something like that could absorb an awful lot of goblin arrows.  Of course, giant sponges are also exotics....

EDIT: Giant sperm whale.  40 times the size of an elephant.

So I believe this is the first FB silk farm DF has seen.

The first problem is capturing him.  Since webber FBs are now webimmune, I knew I couldn't work my way up from a GCS.  Instead, I lured the GCS into my farm with artifact furniture and a peacock, and then shut a bridge in front of and behind him.  I had to build the majority of the silk farm beforehand.

I was also concerned about a way to give path to my FB.  I worked out a very complicated method: the FB is on a staircase covered by a tightly closed hatch cover; his target is a vampire inside a civilians-trigger goblin-grinder, where either side leads to the staircase.  So the FB can't get out, the dwarf can't get, but the only thing preventing path at any given moment is a tightly closed hatch cover.

After all that design, it ended up unnecessary.  FBs will shoot web even without path.

You might notice a lot of infrastructure around the silk farm.  It's there for a reason.  My goal is to make a completely self-contained FB silk farm, run by a vampire, who drops the silk down an autodumping undump.  It's going to require an extra logic circuit to open and close the bridge that blocks line of sight to the FB on access.

I'll post more when I have the complete self-contained unit finished.

The independence of vampires opens up a lot of options for borg computing.  Creature logic clocks have so far been impossible without cheating, because of variability in attributes and attribute rust, but vampires open up the possibility for a very practical, low-resolution clock that can be implemented much more simply than traditional mechanical clocks.


 #########################
 #^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^#^#
 #                       #
 #########################

^ is pressure plate (civilians-trigger) in individual burrow


You'll need a vampire in the clock.  Assign him to his own squad, and each month, assign him to defend a different burrow of the clock.  When he reaches the burrow, he will trigger the pressure plate.  This gives you an easy way to automate monthly functions such as opening the gates for caravans-- a monthly schedule is also adequate for regulating the dropping of food and drink into physically isolated burrows, or blocking off paths to work areas or special caches for a grand yearly party.

It's trivial to turn this into a yearly calendar, if you want to make some kind of doomsday countdown.

Edited to represent latest research.

You may want to check out http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/User:Vasiln/Undump for pretty diagrams that are probably easier to read, as well as a design variant that's more reliable, at the expense of greater complexity.

 
###
#s#
#b#
#h#
#s#
#^#
.t.

h is hatch over channel, b is bridge over channel, ^ is pressure plate (citizens trigger) linked to hatch and bridge, # is wall, s is a single stockpile that spans over the hatch and is set to take from stockpile t
. is floor (or whatever), t is stockpile with same settings as s, created after stockpile s
Orientation and build order may or may not matter

To spell it out, stockpile generates a "bring item" job, but when the dwarf tries to bring an item to the right-most stockpile job, he finds no path, and drops his item.  Luckily, he's already standing on a stockpile (with the same settings) when he drops the item, so he doesn't keep on trying to move that item.

What it functions as is a sort of quantum stockpile, but with normal stockpile sorting, without having to designate anything or reclaim anything, and you can still use the "dump" function to drop things in the magma.  This isn't just nice for reasons of space and automation-- since this stockpile is never full, it also means that if there is an item on the map that can be put in this stockpile, and your dwarves can path, it WILL be stockpiled.

Doesn't always play nice with other stockpiles, since it can hold infinite goods, but "take from" settings work fine.

Works slowly.  Consider expanding stockpile t for a sufficiently sized reserve in cases of high throughput (raw materials, etc).

An earlier iteration saw very slow dwarves occasionally making it to the last stockpile square, thus breaking the undump; the addition of the bridge doubles the length of time that the lure tile is inaccessible.  Haven't seen any problems since I started using the bridge.  EDIT: Stuff still makes it to the lure.  See the wiki page linked above for a different version that's functioning perfectly so far.

It's not uncommon for dwarves to drop goods on the pressure plate instead of the stockpile; that's one of the reasons there's the feeder stockpile, which will prevent infinite loops that could otherwise occur.  In my experience, about 1/3 of the goods make it to the pressure plate, and 2/3 to the stockpile, but this probably depends on the dwarves and the items in question.

If your dwarves are both drawing from and delivering to the undump, dwarves will occasionally drop an item on the way to the stockpile.  So don't use it for food (or anything else that will rot off of a stockpile.)

I think there are a huge number of applications:

1) Zero workshop clutter: Since any number of things can be stored on the tile, you can put your masons to work making doors nonstop and never have to worry about the size of your door stockpile.  Brewer's are another on of those shops that always give me trouble.  EDIT: Use with caution for stills.  Use of bins or barrels can lead to hauling loops.

2) Raw material: This can put a stockpile a single tile from a workshop-- a sorted stockpile, that you don't need to manage.  They're small enough that you can easily have separate stockpiles for individual raw materials, blocked off however you'd like.

3) Mini Mass Pit: Only ever need a single hatch for your mass pit.  Requires diagonal redesign, with an untriggered hatch east or west of the southern s stockpile tile, but that shouldn't break functionality.  Don't have to worry about empty cages with this plan, but you can always build one for the empty cages if that's what you want.

4) Socks: Dear God, socks.  Never again fear that an unowned sock is exposed to the wind and the rain.

5) Trade goods: No more bins necessary.  All goods you'll ever want to trade, right next to the depot.

6) Refuse: Tiny design means you don't have to worry about it getting cluttered up with goblin corpses, and it's easy to leave a single tile open to air.  If you don't care about getting any bones out of them, it can be designed to be magma-floodable.  EDIT: Refuse attracts vermin; vermin attracts cats.  Cats don't trigger pressure plates, and they kill vermin and can leave the vermin on inaccessible stockpile squares.  Use with caution.

7) Mandated goods: Mayor like quivers, and now you have 500 of them-- can't even run a designate dump on your front porch to clear the goblins because of prohibition of exporting quivers?  Here's how you store those goods, and whenever the mayor drops his export mandate, they're all in a nice single square, ready for designate-dump.

Poor applications:

1) Food.  It won't always make it to the stockpile square, and will rot.

2) Drinks.  They don't rot, but to stockpile them, you need to enable barrels, and that has the potential to lead to an endless loop of pick the barrel up, drop the barrel.

I'm also playing with a dropping version of this-- instead of the near stockpile square, I have another hatch, combined with a one-way, goblin-grinder style path to the undump that automatically drops goods on the way out.  So far, this is working without a hitch (I've got it dropping skulls into magma), but there's the theoretical potential for dropping a dwarf rather than his goods when doing this.  So far, it hasn't happened, so I imagine the risk is slight.  (You can make a foolproof dropping undump, but it's incredibly complicated and runs really, really slow.)


EDIT: Just a warning, because people seem really excited about this-- while I've tested this, it's not always been in a real-fortress environment.  I've been testing using super-fast dwarves (EDIT: slow dwarf test later in thread), and maybe that affects things.  Even then, there's an occasional problem, and I don't know exactly how many headaches this would cause vs. how many headaches it would resolve.  So I'm looking forward to anybody's real-fortress reports of the design-- there's always room for it to not function as well as intended.  EDIT2: I've edited this post as I've performed further testing, and I believe that the design given above, within the limits specified, is functional and useful.  Some of this thread is in reference to previous designs that aren't as useful.  Last tested, v34.02.