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What should we call the underground forest?

The Undergrove
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Author Topic: Ghoullights Chapter III: The Lamentation of Dyes [Succession]  (Read 37748 times)

Halfling

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Ghoullights Chapter III: The Lamentation of Dyes [Succession]
« on: February 20, 2013, 06:43:43 pm »

Outpost Koladistam, "Ghoullights"



On an unrelated note, some mussel shells and pearls left along the shore from the fisherdwarves last renegade fishing trip reanimated. We have 18 undead shells and pearls wandering about, along with some undead badgers.
[--]
The lone elephant corpse enters the depot, and single-handedly wipes out the caravan.  We now have our own undead militia, the undead caravan, the undead elephants, and the undead mussel parts all chilling on our doorstep.

The upper and lower areas are a mess of tunnels and passages which I can barely get my head around, the plump tour guide assured me that I would get used to it eventually. I wasn’t at all impressed with the state of the facility at first, it having insufficient housing, military, supplies and medical equipment. This changed somewhat when I saw It however. It is an awe-inspiring sight, a reminder of why I am here. It is an enormous cave filled with fields of fungus ‘grass’ and trees hewn from the earth. It was then that I caught a glimpse of something, a Phantom Spider. Its transparent body hung from the short trees as it spun a fine and silvery web. This is a truly magical place.

"If anyone remembers, and I'm starting to doubt it," I said, "I lead us to live here in Armok's godsforsaken ass-crack among the soulless walking elephant husks and thieving raccoon skeletons and crocodiles and glum purple trees and patches of mud for a reason, and it wasn't to admire the damn scenery or see the exotic zombie leopard."

"It was to an extent to mine some gold and make great halls where they said we couldn't, but mostly to grow sliver barbs, farm spiders and make silk. To catch the cobs, we'll need animal traps on the surface, baited with meat. The only good source of meat here is the zombies, after you re-kill them. Do you see the problem?"

"We need silk. Silk," I told them. "You can use it to web cage traps and make mittens and -- What do you mean that's insane and not worth the loss of life?"

23rd of Malachite - 1003 Mid-Summer

The trapping of the food stockpiles are not going well, Urvad Zanegthosbut's left hand is wandering around strangling dwarves, i hope and pray that this problem is fixed soon and we can trap this hand ...



In The Mechanical Land there is a legendary silk, more supple and fine than any known by dwarfkind, elf or man. It is woven by the phantom spiders of the Forest of Smearing, a warm jungle of forlorn haunt. The dead walk there. Zombie elephants rampage through the purple glumprongs without stopping to feed. Those who die there soon join them in undeath. Hordes of war and legendary beasts are frustrated, succumbing to illness and the evil of the land.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The year is 1000. I am Onul "Halfling" Aludoddom, clothier and hammerdwarf, captain of this troupe of the Wild Labor of the Lanterns of Land, and I am not afraid.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

People call me the Halfling for my height and high voice, but I will show them. I will tame this land with pure dwarven spirit and create the finest black silk ever made.

Spoiler: "Long introduction" (click to show/hide)

This is a succession fort. Everyone who requests one gets a turn. Every turn is one year, spring to spring. The unofficial goal - for me - is to produce black dyed phantom spider silk cloth goods, but I don't really want to tell you what to do. It's a wonderful embark. Please take a turn, try to build something and enjoy the madness. Alternatively, claim a dwarf to be your avatar in this land of wonder. I'll keep a list of dwarves and turns. Here:

Turns
1001 - Halfling (first few pages) done - founding of Ghoullights in a clay layer, underground forest planted, phantom silk left mitten made, sliver barb farm started
1002 - Chaosgear 1 2 done - proper fortress dug in stone, adamantine discovered and mined, artificial underground lake dug, the zombie miner fiasco, invasion of undead pearls and shells, first contact with zombie elephants and death
1003a - Sabretache  background 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 end pictures rolled back - the flood of 1003, monuments and temple built, failed migrant rescue leading to death, the ruler gets his brain smashed by his former avatar, everyone goes insane, overseer is eaten by a crocodile, all ends in blood and death and zombies
1003b - Remuthra 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 time limit exceeded - the Crazed Genius designs and starts building his amazing underground death-machine, causes another flood trapping dwarves in the depths and is dethroned
1003-1004 - Destra - the brave twelve year old overseer tries to bring order to a flooding, tantruming fort amidst an epidemic of zombies 1 2 3 4
1005 - Zombi (delayed) - The second expedition to Ghoullights
1006 - CognitiveDissonance - The third expedition to Ghoullights and the Second Founding: mistakes, mayhem and salvation, zombie carp and the laughing god of death - end of Chapter I1 2 3
1007 - Person (current)
1008 - Chimpanzee
1009 - Impedocles
1010 - joeclark77
1011 - Deus Asmoth
1012 - MoridinUK
1013 - Remuthra

Dwarves
CognitiveDissonance as the manager/carpenter Arcada
Chaosgear as the miner Vendix
InsanityIncarnate as... himself...
Halfling as the skald Mimosa
joeclark77 as the architect/mechanic Joe-Clark
Yuli Vlasi as the blacksmith Chelic
Sabretache as the apothecary and warrior Bruva Thaddeus
Hotaru as a warrior
Deus Asmoth as a male swordsdwarf, weaponsmith or mason
MoridinUK as an interesting labor or militia

Spoiler: "Rules" (click to show/hide)

Journals/other materials
100? - Alternate reality Ghoullights: butchering the dead
Pantheon of the Lanterns of Land
Pre-embark save
Journal of "Halfling" Aludoddom 1 2 3

Oh, and, it has the modest mod enabled, but the only real difference is bows being less powerful and invaders bringing less crap on themselves due to not wearing clothes.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2013, 07:38:50 pm »

Journal, 1st Granite. And so, we have left the safety of Burywheeled, the mountainhome, behind and journeyed to the Forest of Smearing, realm of the unknown and domain of the dead. We number only seven, but with stout labor comes sustenance. My companions...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's Datan, the herbalist and grower. He was excited about the opportunity to begin cultivating sliver barbs. He really likes those wicked thorns.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Edzul, our blacksmith. She likes working with silver and will produce fine trade goods and mail shirts.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Little Chaosgear Hazypaint, the miner. Not strong, not creative, but trustworthy in what she does.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Old Solon Zaledgoden, the potter who really likes stoneware. I have a good feeling there's fire clay in the ground.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sibrek Fillboot, the brewer and carpenter. I never could get the hang of her, but she came along and that's what counts.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Erith, a proficient maceman and proficient drill instructor. Really, really likes maces. We're going to need somebody like him along for safety.

With us, we take one anvil, 50 tower-cap logs, 5 pieces of gabbro of the home-mountain, 10 tetrahedrite chunks to make trade goods and tools out of, 50 units of bituminous coal for fuel, dwarven wine, prepared firefly brain and other assorted meats, seeds, and a copper pick for Chaosgear Hazypaint. I feel we cannot waste time smelting copper in the middle of the Smeared Forest.

Armok be with us.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #2 on: February 20, 2013, 08:25:24 pm »

The first order of business was to set up a perimeter. A wall of tower-cap logs would keep the dead at bay. We arranged to meet in the very center, so that nobody would get lost in the forest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

By 4th Granite, we were safely inside.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Chaosgear Hazypaint dug into the clay down below. The aquifer was not in our way. We found fire clay on the level above, clay down below. Spaces were dug for workshops and furnaces, alcoves for resting in, and later for some fields to grow our first plump helmets in.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The undead were strangely few and left us alone, not being able to climb the wall. Do not look a gift marmot in the mouth.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

28th Granite. Erith has found a new talent in smelting bituminous coal to fuel the kiln above. Dear strange Sibrek Fillboot has graciously furnished our little bedrooms and what will surely one day be a glorious dining hall. The undead have left us alone still. It is a good day.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

chaosgear

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #3 on: February 20, 2013, 08:34:27 pm »

Posting to watch. Dorf me as that miner, if you please.

Asking for a turn is tempting...but I've had very little experience with evil biomes, so I'm guaranteed to run the fort into the ground...and not in a "strike the earth" way.
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I always seem to end up with a magnificent burial complex and nowhere near enough bodies to fill it, or far too many bodies and nowhere to put any of them.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #4 on: February 20, 2013, 08:54:56 pm »

Posting to watch. Dorf me as that miner, if you please.

Asking for a turn is tempting...but I've had very little experience with evil biomes, so I'm guaranteed to run the fort into the ground...and not in a "strike the earth" way.

Done. Ducim Hazypaint has just decided to be called Chaosgear Hazypaint from now on. I'll edit my old journals accordingly. Our current huddle of the damned:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

28th Granite, still - Chaosgear decided to dig deeper today, to see what the earth below the Forests of Smearing holds. Her efforts were not unrewarded. Precious coal! With this, we'll make fine stoneware pots to hold fine booze and firefly brains. Not to mention fine silver spiky balls. 'Mok knows the traders love 'em.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh, and don't worry about losing. So long as you wall yourself inside you'll be fine. Worst case scenario - you might end up locked under an eternal siege with goblin-brought blind cave bears breeding on your map, but that's just more fun for the next overseer.

chaosgear

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #5 on: February 20, 2013, 09:18:51 pm »

...Ah, what the heck, ya convinced me! Sign me up to the wall of shame.
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I always seem to end up with a magnificent burial complex and nowhere near enough bodies to fill it, or far too many bodies and nowhere to put any of them.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #6 on: February 20, 2013, 09:29:50 pm »

7th Slate - I just realized Edzul had taken to calling herself our expedition leader, based on her popularity. As if I, the overseer, were not in charge! I may not be the most charming among our little gathering, but I'm still the one who brought us here. I of course put her in her place immediately.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

12th Slate - the production of large stoneware pots is underway. Solon working is a joy to behold.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Note to future overseers: A dwarf doing what he loves is surely the best way to ensure quality of production.

Slate close:

Chaosgear has dug up enough coal to last us the spring, if not the whole year, as well as a space for a forge. We'll smelt the tetrahedrite we brought and make some fine trade goods, and see if the brave caravan makes it here alive


...Ah, what the heck, ya convinced me! Sign me up to the wall of shame.

Done!

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #7 on: February 20, 2013, 10:14:29 pm »

7th Felsite -

Outside there dwelt a terrifying foe we dared not approach, knowing how the zombies here have a malicious strength hardly to be imagined.


Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On the other hand...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Upon looking at the thing, we decided to try our hand at building a trade depot outside. This turned out to be a horrible idea. We ran into badgers, decided to wrestle the badgers, but they cornered poor Solon Zaledgoden and chased him around Ghoullights.

Amazingly, he beat their teeth out - literally, the landscape is now littered with badger teeth - and returned to our little abode like nothing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And so, now we have a trade depot situated just outside the walls. There are rodent corpses prowling it and we dare not go outside, but it is there.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #8 on: February 20, 2013, 10:31:06 pm »

24th Felsite - Thanks to the efforts of Chaosgear Hazypaint, we have discovered an expansive cavern deep underground. It is overflowing with tower-cap and fungiwood spores. We've decided to all focus our efforts on mining out a clay layer for these spores to grow, to provide us with wood for bolts to fend off the undead and with logs to fuel the smelters, should the coal run out. I have a feeling it won't, however, but nothing bad ever came out of chopping down trees. We've walled off the caverns for now - enough spores have made their way in. This forest I will leave behind me - I have a feeling it will have significance to this "fortress" later, if not sooner.

Chaosgear, bless her, has also discovered a source of hematite. This will make fine armor and weapons. We won't run out of coal to smelt fine steel bars, but if we were to, we would burn tower-cap wood and fungiwood like our ancestors.

Orange Wizard

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #9 on: February 20, 2013, 10:38:57 pm »

PTW. I like watching.
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Hard science is like a sword, and soft science is like fear. You can use both to equally powerful results, but even if your opponent disbelieve your stabs, they will still die.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2013, 10:47:57 pm »

PTW. I like watching.

Please join in if you feel like enjoying a world out to get you.

26th Hematite. The rest of the fort is busy digging out a clay layer for the various spore trees to grow. Tree farms like this will make amazing, beautiful things like hordes of legendary wood burners possible one day, I should wish if not hope. I personally have decided to try my hand at mechanics. My ancestors' notes suggest that at no time should you be further than 10 steps away from a lowering drawbridge (also known as an "atom-smasher") in a haunted land.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #11 on: February 20, 2013, 11:25:04 pm »

1st Malachite. In an evil dream, our first immigrant to the fortress was a vampire. The body drained of life that she left behind soon reanimated, killing everyone in the fortress. Fortunately I soon awoke to the sound of stout dwarves laboring to carve a beautiful underground tree-farm beneath the Forest of Smearing. There are no idlers among us.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #12 on: February 21, 2013, 12:51:41 am »

27th Malachite - We now number 15. Not 15 of the best, nor brightest, but 15, anyway.

Our new immigrants are:
Sigun Openlabored, a strong, otherwise physically very unremarkable ranger with a great memory, poor analytical abilities, poor spatial sense, poor patience and quite poor focus. He doesn't sound like any ranger I've known but there you have it. He likes brown recluse spiders and gems.

Urvad Workgill, a clumsy and quick to tire jeweler who likes obsidian and pig tail fiber fabric, but not gems. Sigh.

A total of four adequate farmers: One very unremarkable person called Urvad Relicdrill who likes gold, one who likes steel and mail shirts and has a good creativity called Deduk Gildguises, a tough and infatigable steel-loving one with a sharp intellect called Oddom Figureglaze, and a strong  but very quick to tire one called Olin Daubleoiled who loves tin and has an iron will.

We also have an adequate thresher called Lokum Tourliving, with dabbling combat skills and a great intuition, but no otherwise remarkable qualities. He likes green glass, so I'm labeling him as a future glassmaker.

All in all the current goals are to complete a tree farm for bolts to gun down the undead with, to provide sustenance for dwarves (two growers and a brewer will do it) and hopefully trade silver with someone who makes it through the mess of undead. Currently there's only a dead bull moose and a corpse pangolin on the map, unlike in my dream, so it's definitely possible.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #13 on: February 21, 2013, 01:12:01 am »

24th Galena, late summer

I've decided the new migrants will all be miners. I haven't any other use for them, and no fortress can be built without a solid force of miners. This ground-laying work will be my legacy that may seem meager now, but will result in untold prosperity for the fortress. We have enough plants and drink - now we must learn to harvest the wealth of this accursed hole in the ground.

It also, incidentally, serves to further my plan to acquire precious phantom spider silk. Here it is:

1. Dig a large underground tree-farm
2. Capture phantom spiders from the cursed forest above
3. Release phantom spiders to dwell in the beautiful underground forest

Yes. It will work and I will have all the beautiful phantom spider silk I could ever want. End of Galena.

Halfling

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Re: Ghoullights - Zombie Elephants & Phantom Spider Silk [Succession]
« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2013, 01:37:31 am »

18th Limestone

More migrants have arrived. Here's the lot of them:

There's Iton Roaredgirder, a novice dyer. He is indefatigable and strong and likes platinum. His kinesthetic sense is poor. I'm assigning him as a miner-warrior - possibly to be assigned to a defense squad in the future.

Then we have Kumil Torchclasps, an adequate glassmaker. He has very poor physical attributes all in all, and no creativity. He will be a miner.

Libash Fountaintreaties is a more interesting one. He has great creativity, marking him as a potential craftsdwarf. He likes mudstone, which we incidentally have a lot of. I'm making him a mason. Actually a mason-miner, because we only have mining, growing and plant harvesting jobs right now.

Eral Mineguilds is an adequate wood cutter. Why these people come here I will never understand. He's very old and very slow to tire. He likes aluminum. He's not very creative. No... you're a miner.

Degel Alathkin is a competent marksdwarf. Good for him, he's a future recruit. Otherwise completely unremarkable.

Now to see how many of them make it inside. Oh, and they brought animals. Grazing animals. Water buffalo animals. Do they not know what this environment will do to these beasts? They will turn into walking horrors that eat dragons alive. I must expedite project atomsmasher one.
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