Bay 12 Games Forum

In generated (non-player) dwarf forts, you can only trade with a dwarf standing at the trade depot - you can trade with any dwarf (not just the broker) for the goods that are in the depot, but you can't trade anywhere else or buy anything else.

I'd guess that, if trading at player forts works anything like the above, you'd need to stock your trade depot with whatever you wanted to buy before retiring, then find a dwarf at the depot and trade with them.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and the compliments!

I know it's just a bit of trim-and-paste, but your photo editing is excellent. So is your storytelling.

That's probably my favorite pic, actually. I got lucky with the "It is noon" announcement.

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For a while now Thob had noticed the light getting dimmer; he had thought it was just his eyes adjusting, until he noticed that the bright thing had almost completely disappeared behind the western mountains. The blue dome overhead was darkening, and everything was taking on the dark subtle hues of the caverns. It was also getting noticeably colder. The sudden change was a surprise to Thob, but a welcome one. Whatever the bright thing had been, it was gone now, and the surface looked a lot more like home in the darkness. Thob realized now how the ancient dwarves had been able to live up here: it was probably that bright thing’s appearance that caused the dwarves to go underground.

He found himself feeling tired—he’d walked the whole length of the valley, almost. There were no beds about, but the green fungus was decently soft in places. He found a good spot and dozed off.

He was awakened by the awful light again. That bright thing was back, hovering over the eastern mountains this time. Thob sighed, but picked himself up and trudged on.

Nearby was a large cluster of stone buildings, small towers and pyramids, in front of a much taller structure rising from the sand. There didn’t seem to be anyone around, so Thob decided to go check it out.

The smaller buildings were open, and abandoned. Thob looked into one little pyramid, but there didn’t seem to be much inside. It was probably just some old house—maybe this was once a dwarven surface-city?

The main tower was an irregular, imposing structure. Cautiously Thob went inside. The interior was a maze of small rooms and hallways, full of table and chairs but not much else, except for several books and scrolls. They were very old and dusty, but mostly intact. Thob picked up a few and scanned them.
Most of them were about the place itself, which they called “Brightbrand.” They were all in the same hand and signed “Mosus Presentracks.” But they didn’t tell him much about what the place was, or had been.
He thought he’d look around the other structures a bit more. He went over to the nearest one, a boxy building a few stories tall, and looked inside. He saw, to his astonishment, some piles of stuff on the floor, in chests and bags. He crept over to investigate: all the goods were of quality dwarven craftsmanship, and made of good material. This must be a treasury! Since no one seemed to live here Thob thought he’d help himself.
He found, to his excitement, a fine iron pick and a nice iron buckler, which might help against dangerous animals. There was more to the place, and Thob was searching eagerly through the fine goods, when suddenly…
With a rusty rattle of mechanisms a bronze pike shot up from the floor: Thob jumped away just in time to avoid a skewering. The weapon was heavily decayed, but would still have made a mess of his insides if it had hit. Somewhat shaken, Thob decided to leave the rest of the treasures alone; he took his new gear and left the building, and the strange complex, behind.

Ahead was nothing but sandy wasteland. Thob knew he could follow the mountains east to Stoneclasped, but it was a long way off and the land looked forbidding. Still, he had to try. It was his best chance of finding some alcohol.

At last he approached the old fortress, nestled in a corner of the mountains. He hoped there was food as well as booze inside—he’d eaten the last of his rations on the way.
There was another temple to Doren inside the top cavern—she must have been a popular deity with the old dwarves. The temple was partially collapsed in the center, but among the rubble Thob saw something glinting in the faint light. He turned over a few blocks, and found two masterfully-worked swords!
He recalled that Osmod, in Dawngloves, had mentioned some dwarven artifacts at Stoneclasped, and these matched their descriptions. He stowed the swords in his pack: maybe if he got them back to Dawngloves, the king would be more likely to listen to him, and help him out.
There was a trade depot here full of goods, and (more importantly) food. Thob took a few rations for the return journey. But the tavern was another disappointment: all the casks were empty, and had been for a long time. Not even the smell of alcohol remained.

He took a look around the lower fort as well, though he didn’t expect to find any booze.
He didn’t find any, but there was plenty of other good stuff around. The old dwarves had left a sizeable hoard down here. Among it Thob found some armor, made of the best dwarven steel: a breastplate, helm, and some mail leggings, along with a pair of iron boots and bronze gauntlets. The stuff was heavy, but you couldn’t ask for better protection. He was in a new world, and who knew what dangers lay in wait for a lone dwarf?

As if to drive the point home, when he came back to the surface several strange creatures had gathered around:
a gray, scaly thing with a knobby trunk paced through the sand;
on top of the fort sat a fat, one-eyed black creature with bat wings;
and among the rock fields nearby stood a couple small, scaly things with bug-like mandibles, whose skin seemed to let off a dense smoke.
None of the things bothered him, though they watched him warily. Still, he hefted his iron pick and kept a close eye on them. He really hoped the king would help him find something to drink: he couldn’t wait to get back to the caverns.

That's great. My best monster slayer was a dwarf lady who went around completely topless, wearing a helmet made of cloth (don't know how/why), and beating crundles with her crossbow until she became a Competent Hammerdwarf. Until she died, predictably, to a blind cave ogre.

I also had two human monster slayers who were actually a young married couple - a spearman and a bowlady. They arrived separately, though: I wonder if there was an awkward moment when they spotted each other, did a double take, and said at the same time: "What are you doing here?"
(Sadly the bowlady died, also probably to a blind cave ogre - we had quite a few in those days...)

I know the monster slayers are (worse than) useless, but I can't help but like them: they're so fun to watch!

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While you can't "own" a house in a pre-generated settlement (though nothing stops you from squatting) you can assign a room to yourself in a settlement that you build. Then, if you retire that character at the site, they will remain in their room.

I dont understand this. can you elaborate?

When you build a site in Adventure Mode (with "b") you can assign various "zones" to it, much like in Fort Mode. One of these is (IIRC) is a bedroom zone, and you can assign these rooms to yourself or your companions.
As for squatting: just find an empty house and move in. As long as no one else lives there, they won't bother you about sleeping or waiting inside.

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You can claim ownership of a site you create, or of any human site (town/hamlet, possibly castles in .47.xx?) either by killing the former occupants or by claiming an abandoned site. It should be possible, also, to give your adventurer a position in a player fortress (including nobility), using retirement shenanigans

I dont understand the last part. can you elaborate?

Retirement shenanigans? Something like:
1. Build a fort, set up a fortress guard squad, then retire the fort
2. Start and adventurer, go to the retired fort and join the fortress guard - this should make you a citizen of the fort, eligible for jobs/positions
3. Retire the adventurer, then unretire the fort. Adventurer should be there and be able to be made, say, baron if you get elevated to a barony.
***I don't know for certain if any of the above is true, I've never tried it, I've only read about it. Caveat lector.

• Craft a quire
• Create weapons (exept stone axe)
• Create Armor
• Make Clothing

These are all possible with some light RAW modding; in fact several mods for them exist already, I think (I make my own, so I'm not sure what's publicly available)

• Use workshops (except Carpender)

Actually you can use any workshop - it's just that there are no Adventure Mode reactions for any shops other than Carpenter's. But if, say, you mod in some smithing reactions that happen at a metalsmith's forge, you can totally use a forge to do them.
Of course the problem there is the forge itself - since you can't build one (without DFHack) you have to find one in a dwarven fortress. But it is at least possible.

• Lie in a bed

I mean, you can lie down anywhere (with "s") - just lie on top of the bed?

• Have a house inside a settlement

...

• Own a room, using retirement and fotressmode

While you can't "own" a house in a pre-generated settlement (though nothing stops you from squatting) you can assign a room to yourself in a settlement that you build. Then, if you retire that character at the site, they will remain in their room.

• Become a noble in a fortress or settlement, or have some occupation or position

You can claim ownership of a site you create, or of any human site (town/hamlet, possibly castles in .47.xx?) either by killing the former occupants or by claiming an abandoned site. It should be possible, also, to give your adventurer a position in a player fortress (including nobility), using retirement shenanigans, but I've never tried it.

• Marry, get a wife or husband
• Get children

All adventurers start out asexual - so, in vanilla, these are impossible. You can change this with DFHack's "fix-ster" script, though, which should theoretically allow adventurers to get married and procreate. I don't know a way to "choose" your lover/spouse, though; but if you retire a fix-ster'd adventurer and let them operate on their own for a while there's a chance they'll hook up with someone.

• Swim underwater
• Fly

Unless you start as a species that can breathe underwater or fly, no. Swimming underwater as a non-amphibious creature (or a non-vampire) always causes you to be Drowning, and you'll die pretty quickly if you don't swim back up. Most bird-men can fly, and some bug-men too, but there's no way for one of the standard races to fly.

If I may say, this topic seems a little... loose? Like, there's a whole lot of things you "can do" in Adventure Mode: you can walk around, talk to people, attack people, look at objects... but obviously that's not the kind of activities you want to know about. Similarly, there's potentially infinite things you can't do: you can't build a spaceship, or travel to other planes, or gamble... these things haven't been added to the game. It might be helpful to add some extra parameters to your question: like, "What can you not do it Adventure Mode that you can do in Fort Mode," or something like that? Otherwise we could could go on ad infinitum with things we can and can't do.

Thob’s encounter with the so-called “king” had been disappointing, to say the least. But he wasn’t going to let it stop him: someone else here would know where the drink stockpile was. He decided to take a look around the fort.

An old temple stood in the corner of the big chamber, a crumbling piece of architecture that had dropped some of its floor stones into a storeroom below. It clearly hadn’t been used in ages. Thob looked at some of the carvings and statues. Most seemed to be images of the temple’s priests, devotees of Doren, goddess of wealth. Maybe that’s why it stood over the hoard?

In the other corner were the remains of a tavern. Thob looked in each of the big stone casks lining the wall, but alas—all empty.

The upper chambers seemed very rudely carved: the walls were stone but the floor was covered in red sand. Maybe these used to be farms.
There were several dwarves in these chambers, all dressed in fine garments. They all seemed to be moving around sort of aimlessly, as if they had nothing to do, chit-chatting with each other about nothing in particular. None of them looked like brewers, either.
There were two reptile women in the fort as well. They spoke in strange hisses and were generally friendly, but seemed not to know much about the fort’s goings-on.

In the lower story was the old great hall, lined on one side with display cases and loaded at the end with treasures of ancient dwarven craft. Thob reasoned it would be imprudent to take from the king’s own treasury without asking, but there was one item that caught his attention: a little roll of paper with writing on it. The symbols were old, and Thob had to try hard to figure out what they meant:
Wasted effort, that. But it did make Thob wonder: what’s an elf?

Thob looked all around but found no drinks. Finally he called to one of the dwarves.
“H’lo there. My name’s Thob.”
“Ah, hello,” she replied. “I am Osmod Reasonchurch.”
“So, what do you do around here?”
“But what does an abbot do?”
“Well… the king says I run a monastery nearby. Of course I’ve never been there. No one has. Been abandoned for centuries.”
“The king made you an abbot?”
“Who else?” said the dwarf. “He made us all something: abbots, barons, generals, diplomats…‘nobles’ he calls us.”
“And nobles just… walk around and hobnob?”
“Well… so far, yes. There’s not much else to do. We’re still getting everything set up.”
“Set up?” asked Thob. “I thought this was the dwarven capital.”
“Oh, it was,” said Osmod. “Hundreds of years ago. And it will be again, that’s what King Urvad says!”
“Uh-huh. How’s he plan to do that with a dozen dwarves?” A dozen useless dwarves, he thought.
“Well, I don’t know the details, but he says we’ve got to ‘reclaim our heritage.’ He’s found some of our ancient artifacts and wants someone to go reclaim them.”
“Stoneclapsed? Is that another fortress?”
“Yes. About a day and a half to the northeast, across the desert. But it’s a dangerous trip—none of us are suited for it.”

Thob spoke with some of the other “nobles” of Dawngloves. All of them wanted this or that artifact returned; not one knew where brew or brewer could be found. Still, they were polite enough. Thob was chatting with one so-called baroness, Rîsen, when he let slip some of his more controversial opinions:
The baroness was getting visibly distressed as Thob continued arguing. Hoping to save the conversation Thob tried to lighten the mood a little. He thought for a second, then made the best joke he could think of:
It turned out Rîsen really liked jokes:
Either that, or Thob was a gifted comedian. Soon the baroness was cheerful again, and Thob felt he had learned a thing or two about getting along with nobility.

But he couldn’t stand around talking all day. He had a mission: if there was no booze in Dawngloves, he needed to look somewhere else. Another fortress might have a few casks left. He would set out for Stoneclasped.

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There'll be more adventure and a lot less plot-buildup (if you can call it plot) in the following episodes: I just needed a rationale for Thob to start his quest. I also hope to get these out a little quicker, now that I'm officially done with school. I'll try to do more illustrations.

In Search of Lost Wine

As Nish had said, Thob was used to extended trips through the caverns: when Lawmined needed ore or stone, he was the one to go out and get it. But that didn’t mean he took the caverns lightly. For Nish it was simple: draw a line between two points on a map and follow it. Thob knew better—he knew of the maze-like passages, spider dens, troll nests, precipitous drops, and dwarf-drowning pools. Even the ancient and long-unused roads that crisscrossed through the caves could lead one astray, as evidently the ancient dwarves hadn’t heard of signs. There would be no “This way to Dawngloves” for Thob… maybe not even a road to Dawngloves.

But Nish was right about one thing: they needed alcohol, and Dawngloves was their best bet, and all things considered Thob was probably the most qualified dwarf to go get it.

The plump helmet fields continued a long way out from Lawmined. They were overgrown and essentially wild now, but you could tell they had once been cultivated. Thob watched a pack of troglodytes gleaning the purple caps and munching them brutishly. The creatures left Thob alone, and he certainly stayed clear of them.

The muddy, stagnant cavern pools were, as far as Thob was concerned, nothing but a blight on dwarfkind, undoubtedly the creations of Zagith, meant for misery.
Water itself was a weak, tasteless sort of liquid that barely registered on the liver; what was more, the water here was full of mud, dead plants, and dead animals, not to mention the waste of living animals (dwarves included). Doc Lokum said it was “necessary for cleaning wounds,” but alcohol was clearly much more sanitary. He also said that sick dwarves should only drink water, which was pure nonsense. Furthermore, nothing good lived in water: they were either clammy limp-tasting cave fish, or something that wanted to eat you—like that cave crocodile.

Some miles south of Lawmined, Thob reached the crossroads. Probably there were more crossroads, but this was the only one he knew. It was also the farthest he’d ever been from the mountain hall.

Thob leaned on his pick as he considered the next move. Nothing in the dark caverns beyond, west, east, or south, suggested where each road went. Judging by Nish’s map Dawngloves could be either west or south, but for all Thob knew the eastward road curled around and headed for the fortress, while the other two ways led straight into magma pipes.

But Nish’s map was all he had to go on. And the way west smelled fresher, somehow. Thob hefted the pick and trudged on. Hours passed in the blackness. The road wound on. He came to a long bridge over a pool, when a grunt startled him into wariness.

A hairy troll stood on the bridge before him. Thob began moving more quietly, but the beast didn’t seem to have seen him yet. He glanced at the white tusks and horns that could separate a dwarf’s insides from the rest of his body, and probably would if the thing spotted him. The bridge was too narrow and too open for him to sneak past unseen. Thob gulped. He saw only one way through. Carefully, cautiously, he eased himself over the bridge and into the fetid pool below.

He hated water, but at least he could keep his head above the surface. Giving the bridge a wide berth he paddled slowly around, like a damn cave fish, through the half-submerged nether-caps and bloodthorns, ever certain that any moment some awful thing would grab his foot and drag him under. He seemed to spend hours in the frigid stagnation before finding the opposite shore and hauling himself up onto the muddy bank, dripping and miserable—but uneviscerated, thank Egesh. He found the road again and struck out. He must be getting close.

Thob was just about over his encounter with the water when the hair on his neck started to prickle up. He was in a tunnel cut through the rock, nothing in sight ahead or behind… but when he took a few more steps something touched him—and then a sharp bite!

Without even trying to see where the spider was, Thob ran. He ran as fast as he could, not looking back, not even trying to be stealthy. If he could run far enough fast enough the eight-legged demon of the deep might lose interest. But he knew he could only run for so long. Breath became labored, sweat poured from his already-soaked skin, leg muscles grew weary. Thob barreled through a pack of naked mole dogs crossing the road and hurled himself around a corner and stopped, panting.

He listened, heard nothing, waited for the sudden pinch of the invisible mandibles… but it did not come. After a few minutes, his breathing mostly normal again, Thob stealthily resumed his treacherous march.

Please, let Dawngloves be nearby…

In all seriousness : I prefer the flat colors in general. The highligts and shadows are properly placed, but the highlights feel a bit wrong. The skin is too reflective, and  the coat, assuming it's leather, maybe not enough. That's just my opinion tho, I love your drawing and I'll read your story now

Thanks! I tend to agree on the highlights - I'm not a very careful artist, I'm too impatient 
I like your, ah, gritty reboot: crosspick is truly the dwarfiest weapon.