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[HMetal2001]

So a daisy chain of forts through the tundra and human settlements may get me dorves into the heart of Tun Deg? OOOOOHHHHHHHH YEEEEEEEEE my writeup senses are tingling. Now time to take some images from Legends Viewer.

PS: Not really now. Maybe in a week.

[HMetal2001]

Sorry about the double post.


Journal of Ral Theaterhall, Expedition Leader of Fadedcrescent
1 Limestone, 503

We have settled into the daily rhythm of things. Our outpost is still very lackluster, but we have struck lignite and mudstone. Mudstone signifies hematite and lignite is a good source of coke. We yet have to find flux.

The King is kind enough to instruct us to settle on a (relatively) distant place so that The Remarkable Ship can arrive here safely.

[Fleeting Frames]

Sorry about inactivity, I had two crashes eat hours of work each. Linking into one of 100+ floodgates across z-levels 100 times and individually assigning rooms is a pain, and if I leave dwarves to it the carpenter probably will take room next to the forges >_>

I learned a trick, tho: If you want to preserve something, like masterwork native gold mechanisms, from linking, forbid them.
....
Theaterhall? I don't know that name. In Fadedcrescent? You settled a new outpost? Hard to merge like that, though.

Lignite would be nice to have in The Faint Ring.

You know what? Let me tell you about The Faint Ring.

"Ahahahahaha. Finally!" laughs Onclibu. "Most valuable bridge, ever!"



The top 1 bridge controls 90% of fortress wealth





 . . .

Back in spring.

Iteb Inkedpaged walks around the fortress, glowing for he will become a father.


Overlooking the fortress, he notices that he - and his squad of marksmen - are the only defence the fortress has against ambush predators.



"This won't do! We're completely open to werebeasts! Lets try to atleast notice them!"



"After which, quick trap for them!"







Months later

"....And with doors here, the bait is complete. "



"Know that no monster or beast shall threaten The Faint Ring, so long as the three thin crosses stand, so long as the three symbols of wealth circulate."




(For comparison, silver warhammer weights 4 Urists.)



"Thank you for that, dear, but you're way past the point where you need to posture for me" smiles mayor Stinthad Granitemuscles. "But you have not secured the access points, though."

"What do you mean? The clear three-wide path for everyone is well walled off."



"I mean this accesspoint here:"



"Oops" blushes Iteb. "I forgot?"

"Now, go fix that. After which, it's time for you to spend time with your child."

"What about you? As a mayor, do you get time for her?"
 
"Hm. I'll take a brief vacation as well. Litast can hold the reins while I'm away."

 . . .

"Of course you may take a break, Iteb! I trust you to finish your work. However, I'll stand in while you're away." says Commander Rovod.

"Thank you. Now, Imush, we're low on bolts - can you produce some more, for each of us?"

"It is done before you can blink your eyes!"



"...Hold on, are you counting those individually?"

"...Yes?"

"I trust that won't happen again."

Reassured, Rovod goes to see the baron.

"And Litast, I believe you got the special something for me from caravan?"

Litast Razorfondled jumps, and looks nerveous.

"Yes, of course I did! The poison's all ready to shoot!"





"Nice job! How about shooting poison bolts?"

"About that....No success yet."

Dissapointed, Commander Rovod shakes her head, and goes to see Onciblu, downcast.

"Hey, is our shooting arena ready?" She asks, not quite managing to put a smile into it.

"Indeed, it is! Actually, it was trivial to include fight arena, so I included one too."



"The animals - well, currently the giant coati - are held and pitted from above, while a lever enables the arena mode, sealing dwarves in to fight."





"This is a pleasant surprise" says Rovod and hugs Onciblu. "I've been having dissapointments in being alone to defend the fortress, but this is great."

"Well, then you'll like this too. After the mood room was done, I consulted with Brassfaiths, and added setup for your squad to control fort access."

"Above, the north slate bridge controls the entrance gabbro bridge. Meanwhile, the rough cobaltite bridge controls the entrance cobaltite bridges." gestures Onciblu.


Sanctume-built entrance for reference.

Putting a hand on Rovod's shoulder, she instructs: "Merely briefly entertain the thought of them not being in the way, and the fortress is sealed - or unsealed the other way."



"Below, the carts cycle, dictating whether this thing is on or off. "



"I don't know what to say. This is unexpected, if great boon." is Rovod left askance.

"Say 'I will put out further watchdogs so this system matters'." says Onclibu.

"I will!" says Rovod with a smile.



"Yeah, really will. Who left that laying around...Monom, was it you?" looks Rovod, fuming.

'If I was still a hunter...well, never mind.'


Malakor Shovedcrystals is alerted to new, curious situation.

"Hey, I think I've got something new. Guess who flew in?" shows off Mech Inkedthunders.



"Granted, most got killed by traps. Just this one was exceptionally fast specimen."



"Hmph. They're barely bigger than hamster. You will find no eating on those." harrumphs Malakor.

"Why would one fly in, though?" asks Inkedthunders.

"They hunt rats. Probably thought it saw one somewhere and looked in." comments Malakor.

"Hm, okay. I'll see if one of those marksdwarves wants to train it. Nearly half of them have animal handling experience."

....

"Yeah, I can take a bit of time to train it." says Iteb.

"Great. I'll set it up near other birds!"



"However, unless you take a child, it won't be much use."

"Eh, here's hoping." smiles Inkedthunders.

Meanwhile

"So, Rith Tealkeys, can you please help me with this? I'd love a neat butchering setup, but I can't swing pick myself." pleads Malakor.

"Sounds practical. What do you have in mind? Anything exciting, I hope?" smiles Rith, looking straight at Malakor.

"It is ah? ...Wait, let me get my notes."

Rith holds back a laugh.

...

Pulling out the sheets taken from library, Malakor sketches.
"For butchering, a standard double-airlock system, with sealed corpse pile."



"Simple enough." nods Rith.

"There should also be a refuse pile for their remains - right below the butcher's shop would be great, thanks."

"Anything else?" asks Rith, smiling without teeth.

"Well, the skylight above it of course..."



"What else...Some will be unusable, so there should be burning and crushing dumpsters set up nearby to get rid of useless stuff."



"Hm, this is kind of complicated." comments Rith. "Can you show me in detail?"

Malakor takes out chisel and etches while speaking. "Yeah. Burner would work and fly across three levels - the one you saw above only really has the flight path, but below level has the garbage cart slipping through wall gaps."



"Below that, there should be bridges to smash with."





"Consider it done" says Rith, and hugs Malakor. "See, you don't have to be always such a grump.


Monom Pagedduty looked concerned.

Sure, the hospital built was great...Expect it was kind of far away.



"Can we make another hospital closer to home?" she asks Astesh.

"Eh, again? Perhaps...Something smaller this time, however. You already know all the necessary people."

"I do...Actually, I think I'll see about better furnishings, this time! Hm, who's the best mason around here?"

"That would be -"

...

Nish Urnequaled looks at Monom, hopeful like a puppy in a cage.

'I will retire from my postion as guard soon.' She thinks.

'Yet there are no cages or chains at all. This is an opportunity.'

"Monom, I'm up for it. But with a small tweak and for a favour."

"Great! What do you have in mind? And, um. As long as it lets me treat people!"

"When someone gets injured inside the fortress, Monom, it may be from an accident, or a brawl, or punishment for said brawl. It is likely dwarven hands are at fault inside the heart of our home."

"Yeah, so hospital's necessary, I have this grand id-"



"Let me finish. " breathes Nish in. "As such, a jail is necessary. Lets make a hospital, Monom - but lets also make it function as a jail, with grand furnishings and complete with private food and drink."



"Mm...those rooms look criminally good." leans Monom over. "Wouldn't you punish me, my captain?"

"I won't. Nobody will be jailing you, Monom." smiles Nish fornlonly. "When I step from guarding to assault squad, I will leave a vacancy. When that time comes, I'll ask you to step in as my replacement. This is the favour I ask of you."

"..." Monom looks downcast.

"I'll do it. If I can't give mercy, nobody else could."


It is 13th Obsidian. Soon, the year will draw to a close. Will the dwarves finish furnishings? Will Morul ever stop praying?


Signs point to yes.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the next chapter may be the last.

[HMetal2001]

Oh great. Now the issue will be the next overseer. Should we recycle or get new people?
Also the group is called The Routed Autonomous Denomination. Cerol (the kid) and his dad made it.

[Sanctume]

High architects are paying off.

Poison bolts would have been awesome.

I think the fort is ready for uninvited guest.

[Fleeting Frames]

Edit: Yeah, poison bolts would have been awesome. Perhaps if you could get them inside container which also contains the poison - not sure how to do this.Or maybe putting them in nickel minecart and letting through magma for poison mist to hit 1000-bolt QSP?

Note that if you do that architecture trick yourself, don't even bother until both are legendary - it's an exercise in frustration. (Well, Onciblu was only a Master, but Morul was Legendary+15.)

I've mentioned the game to few others, but failing signup (likely) I'd suggest you take a turn. Though Routed Autonomous Denomination is pretty cool name. I left in a glorious surprise egg* for next overseer. (Couldn't use myself since water froze before it was complete.)



Few other notes, off the cuff:

Ran cleanconst in dfhack, 2087 construction items cleaned up. Will run again before year is over.

Kitchen: Disabled cooking on every single little eye and whatnot there's only 1 of, and every drink not in hundreds.

Reenabled brewing of Cave wheat (no dwarven beer),

Contemplated toggling off cooking for them as well. Contemplated setting seed cap to 100 or 50 - atm, 200 rope reed and finger millet seeds sitting there doing nothing, hundreds in general - all that is planted atm are plump helmets and sweet pods owing to their large yield and trade value. Hmm...*replaces plump helmets with cave wheat and pig tails on autumn farms. Brewing!*

...Actually, more of that can be addressed by Lolor in person.

Hm, what else...Oh yeah, the surface will probably be on fire when I hand over. I thought I'd finish mining training quicker, but that's break/other competing jobs of Legendary Mason for ya

Also, I got lost several times when designating the labyrinth that is work area. There's bunch of half-finished QSP setups that I've forgotten why I built them:


Between dyer and clothier.


Under mechanics workshop (Maybe store mechanisms, since they're heavy?)


There's room for 2 more under butchers, but right now it is just refuse and boxes/bags/bins/barrels/barrows/cages.


Similarly, free room next to magma kiln/under ashery & soap maker.

Meanwhile, the kitchen could use restrictions (with burrows, so it can still take from syrup-filled minecart), perhaps. Couldn't find a good place to put egg-only QSP, so for the time being plump helmet... is uncookable. I think I cooked them all, oops?

Hmm, what is not clear at first glance...Stockpile links, right!

Still next to millstone, taking from plants/eggs QSP above and BBBBBC QSP from the west.



There's bunch of single-tile stockpiles with drink and food littered around, such as in marble quarry. Those take from tavern food QSPs or old fort piles as well as from anywhere.

Central Masonry takes from quarry return feed and crap stone output feed right above it, Mechanics from just the second.




(The smelter covers it up but there's a downward stairs there.)

Quarry return gives to crap stone input.

The garbage truck is for burning any crappier outputs...Atm it does so to less than masterwork shields(got hundreds) as well as well as rotten outputs of food industry. Considered skulls/teeth/body parts as well(if butcherer 1 tile up doesn't want them, burn). Note that garbage truck will take anything; atm input is managed by stockpile restrictions it draws from due that being more visual.

The mood wood pile takes only cavern trees - tunnel tubes for now.



Most old fort piles got restricted to links only, btw.

There's other stuff, but those are better addressed in character.

Oh yeah, Nomal toolblows angrily screams at me that there's nothing to catch in the swamps deep in earth. The ingrate.

The citizens' military likely won't get complete bone gear in order by the time the year tolls over. Dissapointing. Greaves in particular are lagging behind; ff leather gear gets in order first, perhaps consider replacing them with leather leggings on some of them. Less protection, but still covers and won't degrade by being worn still.

There's two dabbling bowyers and Blahsadfeguie tied between masonry, metalcrafting and bowyership. The citizens are set to carry wooden bows and no ammo atm; Once there's a legendary bowyer one might see about producing 50 masterwork crossbows and supplying ammo.

Though that may never happen. Eh, Zasit got trained to legendary armorsmithing the hard way.

Speaking of which, there's currently no real barracks or masterwork˘ armor stockpile - the closest thing to this is the masterwork wood shield pile into the fort entrance. It's up to next seer whether to organize these things into fort's castle keep (so that military is right after traps to fight) or fort's heart (ugh, steel armor is heavy. Also, nasty visitors?). Certainly, with good armour user skill the Lightning Picks could be outfitted much more durably - currently they kinda rely on not getting hit(btw, if they lose a leg, also up to you if to make wooden or platinum crutch).

Defensively, one gold-filled gold cart is left over inside the quarry.

Speaking of which, it didn't fit into previous update due Stinthad interrupting her husband,  but the fort entrance smasher's cadence is off due sub-tile positions - it starts off nicely smash every 8-15 steps, but then they start hitting each other, reducing the deadlyness from "smash everything" to "smash everything". It's possible to fix that, perhaps, but after hours of messing around I gave up on it.

Though, if anything gets smashed, that pressure plate next to bridges turns it off for 100 steps so dwarves can recover the corpse¯.



Btw, if those doors get smashed (might want to replace one with artifact furniture once mood strikes), those bridges go up, sealing the fort. In which case, stopping the smasher and access without walking across bridges/unsealing the fort can be done with levers 2z below.



Plus general lever for those bridges inside the tavern, in case of resetting the bait dragging on. Though note that in that case dwarves might walk across those bridges, which might lead to zany "gone missing for a week" hijinks.


(The lever also symbolizes The Faint Ring of The Doors of Evening)

Other things to tackle? Well, I've turned the forts into single-wide passage swiss cheese. One might want  to widen those passages where possible.

The caverns are largely unexplored, but there's at least one gem FB with deadly dust in 2nd cavern, and potential crocsplosion to harness.

With sufficiently large water reservoir, one could still put the venom to use - you can lace water with it, so you could build a watergun that poisons the targets with nausea as it explodes themˇ.

The overseer after the next will likely see things trees growing up in the orchard. To avoid trampling, it is currently sealed (also, all this stone and wood is hidden/forbidden).

There is consideration to floor 2z above to make another cool space to live in while fighting cave adaption, while simultaneously limiting tree growth. I located below, but three steps up is not ardous distance - but neither is six, which would allow for full fruit tree growth. Proper anti-flyingspidertitan safety planning would be necessary, though.

I used d-b-h in tavern - a lot, for things like cage traps left on floor(if a cage pops up, something is inside). Furnishing color-appropriately and decorating the furniture is something that is possible, but lacking.

* Warning: Undercooking the egg and spilling it on yourself will kill the fort. Also, overcooking the egg may also kill the fort.

˘All inferior weapons and armor is melted.

¯If it fails to work, the fort will be smashed in the quest for -left sock-.

ˇFar more deadly to your citizens than any targets, really.

[HMetal2001]

Me? Oh crap.
If you go to the engraving menu and select preexisting images, there is an image of a battle axe and 2 crowns. That's the symbol of The Faint Ring.

[Fleeting Frames]

I've been avoiding looking at that menu on account of it crashing my games beforehand numerous times, thus losing lot of progress (ex. details on clay statue, I think?). But I'll see about a test after a quick save....

Though, I'll note that while that may be symbol of Deathgame, the dwarves disagree

No idea how you'd change their mind, but why not both?
 
E: oops, that's actually civ symbol ^^;;

[Fleeting Frames]

So I have two pages. Usually, my updates are more like ten pages, and I know I said the next chapter shall be the last, but what the hell....If it is written, it might as well be posted now. More is coming, though. (Also, crash ate the combat below, but didn't lose much since saved right after manually assigning bedrooms.=)


"Hm. Do you hear that? Feel the vibrations?" stage-whispers Rith Tealkeys to her sister Medtob K Heldtown.

"Yeah. I sure do."



"A battle! How exciting!" exlcaims Rith. "I wonder how deadly it is?

Medtob cringes, hearing the one-sided battle.

Spoiler: "Deadly." (click to show/hide)

"Aah, if I could look at it with my own eyes." sighs Rith. "Wouldn't want to fight, but..."

"Yeah." agrees Medtob. "I want to capture it for glory and display in tavern?"

"Wouldn't hitting everyone with dust be impractical?" asks Rith with raised eyebrow.

"Eh, I'm sure it wouldn't do that when caged or behind windows. Besides, hear - it seems like the dust is just purely physical weapon, not actually poisoning the plump helmet men." argues Medtob.

"Hmm....Okay! Thought it might be long-term effect, who knows?" hugs Rith Medtob.

"We will know." asserts she.

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter



Monom Pagedduty - Möruletest, as it is spelled in the dwarven tongue - is content and focused.

When she came to Deathgame in the slate, she was rather tense, knowing that her desires, her pushiness, her stubborness might make her a jester or pariah - for who would listen to a  flimsy novice fisherdwarf, with no social or merrymaking skills to speak of? And her husband was little better, with but a month's worth of plant-picking under his belt.

Driven to seek better situation, to help burgeoning fortress and place to raise a family, she abandoned her old friends to travel for a month to far-away outpost.



And succeeded beyond her dreams. Two hospitals, captain of the guard, legendary combatant, expert at carpentry - bye, fishes. Now, she just desires safety for her family.

"To be honest, dear mayor - and Kosoth and Ber - I'm worried about children following me into combat."

Stinthad nods, choosing her words carefully. "Indeed, Monom. I wouldn't enter one with a child myself - we should keep them out of it and inside. "





"I do hope for day where I can leave Lokum behind. But for the time, I'm carrying her everywhere." shakes Monom her head, with Kosoth and Ber humming to agree.

"Your daughter, Monom - but for a woman of peace, you do more on the martial side of things."

"It's the draft." shrugs the newly-enlisted captain of the guard her shoulders.


OOC: Monom Möruletest has been great dwarf for story.  With her being almost never sick and truly fulfilled to assist those in need, military with medic labours enabled (never used - Deathgame is safe) was the fate for her - of course, that description applies to several migrants I got.

A different history might have made her inactive military, and kept fishing on to trigger and slay ambushes by the river, or just ignore her and have her die to a coati.

However, her stubborness, confidence, cheerfulness, humbleness, tolerance...I think of her as terminator puppy, kicked easily but incredibly stubborn to heal and help you.

She's the only character I found worth starring out of 40 migrants to arrive during my reign. The top 2,5% was a novice fisher/fish cleaner/fish dissector, not the great clothier, doctor or moody dwarves.

Spoiler: Her profile (click to show/hide)

I think that's remarkable.

[HMetal2001]

Could the FB's corpse be processed?

[Fleeting Frames]

Maybe with a Strange bonecarving or Macabre mood?

...And since I have announcements.txt set to pause on combat, it was painful enough that if I had cavern system setup and it was still season+ remaining I'd just have sent the Lightning Picks to kill it.

Putting Zon on display....If Medtob had succeeded in that, I'd have had Rovod pull rank and make it marksdwarf training display - maybe even with wood to make it last. Though, will have to get a special room to prevent the deadly dust reaching them while allowing them to fire back;

Well, it kick-bisected the plump helmet men to death, so cave 2 beasties are on a timer.

Btw, a short note: Remember what I said about leaving the single coins to be traded away? Never mind that. I'll see about Sanctume starring in an update (I've talked rather little about production), but for now lets say the 97,5% matters

[Sanctume]

Do we have a minecart shotgun using split coins as ammo?
It be funny to see a report of coins tearing through guts and brains.

[Fleeting Frames]

Nah, sorry :v.

I ran a test on how the waterboarding actually works out.

Some dwarves go into room, fall asleep, get waterboarded. Floodgates toggling beautifully....285 exp in one successful sleep session.


That's 2128 exp in a year, for 7,4(6) sleep sessions a year. Which suggests that, hm, dwarves only spend average of 81 minutes per day sleeping.

Enough for competent swimmer, and legendary swimmer in 8 years. Nowhere near worth the realtime effort put in, but they could keep training as long as the succession lasts, and they weren't training anything otherwise during that gametime...

Expect.

Expect military sees better gear, leaves old ones in their room when they wake up, and dwarf going after that fills the room with water without draining it by leaving.

Expect dwarves drop their clothes onto pressure plates, cue hauling tasks.

Expect I've seen one dwarf actually physically idling on top of a plate, rather than the meeting area.

:<

T_T

Yeah.

*sigh*

Going to have to say no to bedroom flooding, at least of everyone. I don't think you can even circumvent all those problems for everyone, expected perhaps maybe by pressure plates as only sleepable spot to ensure flooding only happens when dwarf is in + sleep in barracks to get them onto it....Eh.

Drowning was an expensive mistake.

...

Also, found few things: trying to set image related to historical figure in jeweler's encrust finished goods crashes every time. (Augh)

As does trying to specify an image on duplicated job.

As does searching for bar/ with k and then pressing up. You don't expect to crash with just k, do you? Welp, I thought wrong.

Also, some bin-related double-linked list crash randomly happening while game was paused (further reaffirming my decision to never make bins).

So cheesed that I seriously considered making macros...>_>

Cheesed enough to provide writeup later; For now, Here's the save(couldn't get confirmation email from DFFD, low fps due being on fire) and Here's the map.

[HMetal2001]

I'm such a noob, that I don't know how you got all that loam for a massive wall. How'd do that again?

[Fleeting Frames]

If you mean the orchard above tavern, Sanctume caved it in from surface.

Otherwise, soil walls, once mined out, are gone. *

*with maaaaybe an untested unsure exception of caving in obsidianized walls.