Bay 12 Games Forum

In my current fortress, Wheatcraze (I was planning to do a lot of farming both above and below ground but that never really panned out), the current population is 161 with 22 dead. I've done a bit of raw editing for this world; Dwarves will butcher and consume sentients, humans are thieves and babysnatchers, and dwarves can make bows and arrows. My civilization, the Portal of Doors, is at war with a goblin civ, The Sin of War, and I think they might be extinct, seeing as I haven't had as much as a goblin thief in the nearly four years this fort has been going.

There's a handful of random flooded rooms (including one with a well and two statues built in it) which are failed attempts at diverting water from the river to make a proper well. I do have one set up now though, and decently close to the hospital, though I have only a chief medical dwarf who isn't even dabbling in diagnosis.

There's a dwarf who bears my name 'Kaitlyn' Azmolkivish (Obscurelancer) who is currently the manager and one of the original seven. I picked her because she likes cats and at the moment has 10.

My military is all of 11 dwarves at the moment. A full squad of swordsdwarves ranging from novice to skilled. All armed with iron short swords, shield, breastplate, helm, and gauntlets with leather leggings and boots. In addition there's the captain of the guard, a competent bowdwarf, using a ☼bone bow☼ and mostly leather armor but he has the honour of wearing a ≡weretortoise shell helm≡. Also included is a war giant tiger purchased from an elven caravan and assigned to my militia commander.

I've been taming gray langurs that run into my cage traps with a bit of success now that I'm keeping them in their cages. The earlier ones I had let out eventually returned to being wild and were put down (primarily by their still tame fellows). Taming Impalas has been met with much more success, and I even have a tamed rattlesnake (which is not going to ever be released from it's cage, but it serves as a conversation piece in my sculpture garden meeting hall.)

My metalworking industry went surprisingly well. Basically all the ore I've found is hematite, so I'll have no shortage of iron. In a migrant wave I had gotten a great weaponsmith so that was covered. I needed shields for my military after he had crafted their swords however, and I had no armorsmith of any description. So I did the logical thing. Find the farmer who liked shields and make him do it. The part that really went well though was that shortly after said farmer/dabbling armorer went into a fey mood. Having no other crafting skill, he claimed the forge, grabbed his materials, and proceeded to make an artifact iron shield.  Because of that, an earlier mood which produced artifact leather armor, and more recently an artifact pig tail fiber tunic, my militia commander is wearing three artifacts simultaneously.

Shortly after I breached the caverns from my fortress a forgotten beast showed up. An emaciated winged rattlesnake with a poisonous bite. At the time I had a few miners down there being silly about removing some stairs and two were stuck. My legendary miner, who I was getting to try to help them, was also nearby but not stuck. I immediately canceled that and set up a random mining designation up beyond the bridge I made to flip up in just such a situation. As soon as he was through the lever was pulled, the bridge withdrawn and the fortress safe. The miners proceeded to fight the forgotten beast after having either dodging into, being hit into, or through some other means getting into the underground lake. Remarkably, they managed to break the bones in both it's wings; Not that it did any good, especially for them, since even if they killed it miraculously they would still drown. A short while after that I decided no. That was the boring way out, this is Dwarf Fortress, let's do something crazy. So I stationed all 11 of my military dwarves, with a war giant tiger as accompaniment, at the bridge. I ordered the lever pulled and somewhere unseen at the time, the forgotten beast got a smell for them and started it's trek back towards the stairway up to my fort. When it arrived, it was shot with a ≡giraffe bone arrow≡ and fell over. My swordsdwarves used this opportunity well, quickly opening up lots of wounds in it, and it's tongue was even cut out. The first instinct of one of my sworddwarves was apparently to run up to this gigantic venomous rattlesnake and bite it in the fucking head. She got the nickname 'Snake-eater' for that particular maneuver. It ended up dying of blood loss shortly after; It didn't managed to hurt - more importantly bite - anyone. This being my first forgotten beast encountered and killed, I was quite proud of my not particularly skilled dwarves for pulling it off.