Bay 12 Games Forum

Just wanted to share what happened a few minutes ago in my fort.

Year 2 of a reclaim (first attempt everyone dehydrated in winter. Didn't bring enough booze, failed to notice the river freezes over). A lowly hauler peasant gets possessed. She doesn't take over any workshop, but proceeds to hangabout in the dining hall. Probably needs something obscure like a glass blowers workshop or whatever. I have over 70 dwarves, this ones just a hauler, and its a possession so no legendary status. I am beyond caring, too busy working on my waterfall project.

When the time comes the dwarf goes insane, of course, and enters a berserk mode. The nearest thing to her is a baby. I slightly cringe as I see the red streak, that is undoubtedly infant remains, sailing through the dining hall. She then proceeds to chase around the few melancholy dwarves along in there with her, who all promptly get out of the way. A child, however, doesn't run, but confronts the insane hauler. She also lasts a good long while, but eventually I see the kid also die. Next thing I know there is a bunch of various profession dwarves streaming into the great hall. Smiths and haulers and even other children. They all proceed to gang up on the insane dwarf, back her up against a wall, and just... go crazy on the crazy.

Amused, I go in to check the combat logs at this point. There are 15 pages, I start going at them line by line. There's always something gruesome, I find, about reading the logs. How you get to see all the gory details explained in such a clinical matter. The insane hauler grabbed the baby by the foot, twisted it out of its socket, and threw him across the hall. She also threw the daring girl around a lot. But not before the child got in a few good shots. The first of which was straight to the haulers gut, which made the insane dwarf vomit up its last meal. The kid even managed to tire the berserker out, and make it collapse from over exertion.

... And sadly, the brave girl also had horrible things happen to her. The first of which was having her true ribs fracture. Then her wrist twisted and collapsed. Then her knee joint, other wrist, shoulder socket... The insane hauler systematically bent and twisted joints and socket as it got its hands on them. As mentioned, she also threw the child around a lot, even charged at her several times. The girl managed to get a bite hold on the dwarves wrist at one point. After it got her to release it, the berserker grabbed the girl by the shirt and punched her in the face. Eventually, after her ribbcage collapsed, the girl finally died.

This was somewhere around page 10 of the combat logs. And this is when the other citizens rushed in and swarmed the insane hauler. I let the game run after this, keeping an eye on the proceedings. When the child murderer finally died, I went back into the logs. There were 55 pages. 45 of which were just the mob punching the hauler in the head. Nothing else. Everyone just punched the insane hauler dwarf in the head, for 45 pages of combat logs. The cause of death, you ask? Surely a caved in brain? Nope. Asphyxiation. On page 55, when I assume someone decided enough was enough, the crazed dwarf was put into a strangle hold and got chocked to death, WHILE still being punched in the head by everyone else.

I think I'll go look into the dead children. I'll build them a grand crypt. But not in the lower levels with all the other dead and angry dwarf burial chambers. No. Their final resting place will be grand, with waterfalls and statue gardens and golden/platinum sarcophagi. It will be a happy place. I feel like that needs to be done.


Combat logs: http://imgur.com/a/CtGXS

EDIT: There were two children and a baby. The fighting girl was an 8 year old legendary bonecarver, she had created an artifact floodgate.  I will use it to control the fortress deep waterfall. All the happy thoughts my dwarves will get will be in memory of her. The other child was a 2 year old boy, who merely got in the way and got his throat crushed. The baby survived! Its mother is taking her to the hospital.

Stop derailing thread
About dwarf fortress it is
Urist is angry

Seriously, how does one write a haiku?

Haikus are japanese poems. Being japanese, they're different than your average run of the mill poems. For one, they follow a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. They also don't have to rhyme at all. So you write 3 lines. First line has to have 5 syllables, the second 7 and then 5 again. Its rather fun to try to get your story/point across in just 3 lines and 17 syllables.

Floodgates! You dig out wherever you will want the water to be, and ALMOST link it to your water source. Make a way to drain the water, most commonly with a screw pump (or pumps if you need to go up several levels). Then you build all the floodgates where you will need them. That would be where your water would soon come from. Link the floodgates to a lever, test it if it works, build walls to close any connections to your fort and finally mine out the remaining bits connecting your reservoir to the river/lake/ocean and watch the water flow. Close the floodgates when its full or half full or whatever and test out your draining system if you bothered to make one.

Tl;dr;
Floodgates.

Alright, the more the merrier! There just seems to be problems with people taking over the save... ProfHockenbery hasn't responded to my PM or on the forums since his turn "started"...

 It can be done, it won't burn. For extra dwarfyness make it soap instead.

Nice surprise about this shorter form. Can you tell us what it is you are talking/writing about?
Has any info. about this shorter form been posted before (and i just missed it)?

... what?

To answer Szkeptik, it very much depends on what you saw on the embark screen. If you had shallow ore(s) marked, you'll find ore(s) in the layers before the caverns. If you had deep ore(s), you'll find them after the caverns. This is a generalization though.

If your embark only has the one biome and you had shallow ore (not ores), means you already found it, the galena, and there is no reason to expect any other kind of ore to be in those layers.

For your problem... there's always the candy...