As the dwarves top a hill they see far out in the distance the site they are destined to call home and, perhaps for some, their final resting place. Before the exhausted and now well-traveled dwarves lay a volcano that can be best described as a caldera or perhaps a volcanic crater.
NOTE: This was taken in autumn so my fort is already underway, I didn't think to take a picture with stone sense at embark. I apologize.
As the dwarves quickly park their wagon near the volcano the three dwarves who volunteer to be miners begin to quickly search for a good place to set up.
First miner
Second miner
Third miner
While the other dwarves quickly volunteer for their own jobs:
One volunteers to be a stone detailer and farmer, at least until migrants arrive to replace him.
Monom exclaims he wants to work with stone, so we assign him as our mason.
Nish, our expedition leader, says he will do architecture and mechanics.
And finally, Nish. He says he will do just about anything, so we throw him into general labor. Basically carpentry, wood cutting, butchery and tanning, and anything else we feel needs done.
Aside from our dwarves we have two male horses. Not much use, being male an all. We can't even milk them. We decide to keep them around none the less.. For now at least. In the end the miners decide on an area just south of the wagon to mine our initial entrance, Ber insist we can expand it later if we must to allow wagons through and to an alternate entrance deeper into the fort. In the end we all agree that would be the best place, and designate it to be mined.
Soon after they finish the entrance and all the dwarves have rushed into the narrow cave that was formed it begins to rain... But it isn't rain it's... Well...
interpret it as you may... It's rather disturbing seeing... Filth fall from the sky... Nish quickly suggest we all stay inside and attempt to do a kind of experiment to test and see if there's any adverse affects caused by the erm.. 'filth'. We quickly decide the best candidate for this lovely experiment would be one of the two very useless horses. As we begin to herd the horse, and long before we have a chance to react, a cat runs out of the cave! At first we all watched and laughed, amused how any creature would actually want to be outside in such weather.
Our laughs quickly ceased when we all witnessed the most gruesome thing any of us have ever seen, accompanied by a stench that rivals even that of the filth. Before our very eyes the cat began to... For lack of a better word, it began to rot. Upon close observation Nish suggested the theory that the rain causes severe necrosis, so severe in fact that it caused nearly instant affects. With this instant necrosis came the side affect of full body paralysis.
We all looked helplessly, none willing to reach their hand out to try and pull the cat in. All of us knowing that it was good as dead anyway. Within seconds the cat drew its last breath... By no means was it a swift or painless end, but perhaps that is the most merciful death any of us will endure.
But the cat wasn't the only thing that was affected. With horror Ber pointed out past the rain. We all had to squint to see what she did... And then we seen, a mere flash as something fell from a tree. No, not a tree... The Sky. So not even flighted creatures were safe from this vicious rain that turned the most healthy creatures into decomposing heaps of flesh and bone. One of the others, I don't recall who, made a half hearted joke about 'This takes acid rain to a whole new level'. Some of us forced a laugh, but not Nish.
"This means no going back." We all looked at him, totally shocked. Sure, the rain was dangerous, but couldn't we find a way back? Maybe to contact people? I voiced these thoughts but Nish simply shook his head.
"We don't have the supplies to leave. And, if by some miracle someone from the outside managed to arrive between the rain storms, they would have to hope the weather remained clear long enough for them to get into our gates. Assuming by some blessing of Armok, they managed THAT they would have to make the dash back from this evil place and make it all the way back to the mountain homes to ask the king if we may leave this place... So, we stay. For now at least." He began to walk away, deeper into the cave that we now felt was our prison. We tried to protest, to explain to him that we MUST leave, no one will ever survive this weather to get here. "Precisely." he grunted. "No one will ever come help us, so until we find our own way out we're stuck here. Make sure to wall up the entrance when you decide to quit gawking at the weather."
So, with heavy hearts, we slowly pulled ourselves away from the entrance, one by one. When we were all gone at some point Monom finally bricked up the entrance, so no one could leave. It was more for our safety truly, if anything could survive that rain we wouldn't want to mess with it.
sorry about this picture, don't know what happened.
We all set about making a plan. We needed to get our supplies, and the dash from the entrance of our cave to the wagon was far too long to do. So, in the end, we decided on a plan. We would build a new entrance just below the surface where we could quickly get inside. We wouldn't risk grabbing much, just the essentials. Like the seeds we desperately needed to make both food and drink.
The original idea was to drop the wagon from the upper z-level to the lower z-level.. Until I realized that wouldn't help matters at all.
The plan went smoothly, we all ran above and quickly grabbed the seeds we needed. After that we quickly walled the area off again, some of us hoping that maybe one day we could put it to use. After that was done Rigoth went to work on building several farm plots, so we would have somewhere to plant and grow our crops.
It became painfully clear, however, that we would not have enough food to survive until harvest... So we did what we had to do... We slaughtered the horses.
It's not as if it mattered much, if were to set them to graze outside they would surely suffer the same fate as the cat, and if we didn't let them graze they would starve. So we felt it was our only option.
After the most immediate and obvious threat of starvation was solved, we realized one last thing... We had no source of water. Once again we sprang into action, drawing up a quick plan to tap water from one of the surface ponds to bring water into the fort. It may not be exactly the cleanest water, and it wasn't he safest plan, but it had to be done. We channeled a 3x3 area for the water to safely flow into. The idea was to fill it up and then use that as our temporary source of water.Unfortunately in our haste we forgot about water pressure.
To the right you can see the stockpiles and workshop zones.
The flooding wasn't bad, but it was enough to startle us and remind us to avoid that in the future....
And with the new opening in our fort you could feel the warm summer breeze....
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Topic: Workedoak - A fort that melts your skin! (update and poll 4/9/15) (Read 9079 times)