Chapter 2: Under siegeCleaning and trying to ignore the outsideWith the overhang constructed the McUrists of Agerelics gained some breathing space. They controlled the central restaurant area and the underground below it + the fisheries. Outside was a large number of undead walking. Sometimes splitting into groups, sometimes converging on hapless wanderers attracted by Agerelics famous deep-fried meals. They stood no chance. Slow but relentless dozens of the dead, some of them once fierce and known dwarven warriors covered in steel, mauled them down.
No chance:
Most inhabitants of Agerelics did not (want to) notice what was going on outside. Food and booze was available and the band was playing louder to drown out the screams of desperation occasionally to be heard through Agerelics thin wooden walls. Still, they could not forget the war easily. For weeks they worked on burying or more often dumping only the dead within the small area they now controlled.
Traps and nightmaresThe mercenaries were ordered to equip themselves and train their martial skills. More importantly chief engineer Shem was tasked with the construction of ingenious traps to deal with the zombie plague. Her first design was a simple corridor with a tasty chicken and variety of traps. Some people will choose to die for chicken, she once read in an old codex. And sure, they came... but more were hunting for customers outside restaurant. And the customers inside grew restless too. Some thought of leaving. Her second design was inspired by the minecarts available in the fort. None of it was even moving. Yet, still they managed to compress leather, thread and mussel shells in tightly packed, compact piles - tighter than any dwarf would be able to do even with a good hammering for added density. The zombies would not come voluntarily to the minecart, but a moving minecart might compress them just as tight as the mussel shells.
{OT: The bone&shell qsp was set to dump to the wall delivering it to the non stockpile tile of the minecart generating unlimited hauling jobs in the process. I assume this was not meant as a workfare program
Since there already were a few qsp's in the fort I increased their number somewhat to get more work out of the central area. More in a later update.}
A circuit made so the minecart would keep moving was drafted and build ... but the earth itself was shaking these days. Was the end of the world near? Would it all crash? Did we condense matter too tight so the world could not withstand and fell apart? Shem saw a flood in the catacombs breaking out of the walls one night. What did it all mean? Was it just a bad dream or a reality that nearly happened. Wherever they went it felt like deja-vu as if they were reliving their days in endless repetition. At some point the nightmares passed. (Thanks, sanctume!) Slowly the different traps and visitors reduced the numbers of the horde, that had stopped growing now the necromancer was nowhere to be seen.
Two traps:
The lowering numbers brought new problems. Visitors both arriving and leaving decided moving through the trapped areas and against the thinned numbers of undead they even managed to reach it at times. And sadly blood was spilled for Agerelics could not just open its doors. These sad incidents at least provided valuable insights. The undead really like chicken. And even though they could not open locked doors they had a mysterious sense of their state moving towards an unlocked door, but losing interest the moment it was locked. Very much unlike the visitors that went straight into the trap only to notice that the door was locked when standing in front of it. {Compared to the killing fields outside it was only a few, but there were some serious design problems with the minecart trap, it will be redesigned within the remaining time. More in the next update.}
Another trap was then installed in the northern entrance. Just like the dumped corpses were crushed under bridges, the last moving corpses were crushed under a bridge constructed here. This bridge finally broke the siege on Limestone 18 and the McUrists of Agerelics were once more free to fry. But death was all around them...
Trapping the last of the dead:
View to the west:
View to the north:
View to the south:
Comment: Apart from the minecart trap all other were pretty cheesy, but whatever. I wanted prisoners for later experiments and wanted to break the siege during the year. I already continued to play a little beyond this point. Is there anything people would like their dwarves to do or projects to start in the last 4-5 months?
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Topic: McUrists of Agerelics: Weremice, Now Making Artifacts![43.05][Players needed!] (Read 39723 times)