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Author Topic: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)  (Read 9028 times)

Superdorf

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The year is 125, and the depredations of tooth and blade have worn hard on the Mechanism of Deciding, a burgeoning dwarfish civilization in the west of the world. Merely 250 in number, its people face a rapidly growing goblin horde over 1000 strong. The two civilizations maintain a tremulous peace for the time being, but peace never lasts long between dwarf and goblin... and the dwarves cannot survive much more loss.

Sooo... I'm gonna step in with a Founding Seven! Our plan? Build an impregnable bastion of dwarven power... right under the noses of our enemies.



We'll draw their fire, beat 'em back, and set out with indomitable military force once the gobboes are thinned out a bit! Foolproof, yes? Probably not. But let's give it a shot anyway!




Our starting locale is depressingly short of metals, but we've got sand, clay, flux, and lots-n'-lots of wood. We'll buy metalwork off the caravans, use that to beat back the first invasions... then tap the bowels of the earth to pump liquid fire into the lung cavities of our enemies.

Right then!


..and mash the randomizer a few times for a name!



Hm. Grim. Almost comically so. Nice and dwarfy too.
Spoiler: It's perfect. (click to show/hide)

Updates

Spring 125 - Life is mushrooms, mushrooms is life
Summer 125 - Dig deep!
Autumn 125 - *insert deranged cackling here*
Winter 125 - It's full of bards!

Spring 126 - Minions! Glorious minions!
Summer 126 - We shall slay our foes with the power of BLING
Autumn 126 - Beasties great and small
Winter 126 - That was a *lot* of images to process

Spring 127 - Play with fire...
Summer 127 - ...and you'll get burned

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« Last Edit: August 14, 2019, 08:07:52 am by Superdorf »
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Radipon

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2019, 01:21:54 pm »

Where there's sand, there's glass. Where there's glass, there can be a magma pump stack.
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Splint

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2019, 05:36:37 pm »

Trade trade, trade, because there will be times you can't rely on traps, and some dwarves are dolts who refuse to get things not made of thier preferred material, and some will almost invariably want metal crap.

Also you poor soul. So little space, so little breathing room when the monsters and attackers come...

NRDL

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2019, 05:52:07 pm »

Good stuff. Are you accepting dorfing?
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Superdorf

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2019, 07:15:49 pm »

Hooray, people!

Trade trade, trade, because there will be times you can't rely on traps, and some dwarves are dolts who refuse to get things not made of thier preferred material, and some will almost invariably want metal crap.
Aye, I'll be trading for all the military-grade stone and meltable equipment I possibly can; I'm hoping to have at least enough soldiers equipped to repel the first goblin invasion. The first invasion's usually pretty dinky, so I should be alright... y'know. Probably.

Also you poor soul. So little space, so little breathing room when the monsters and attackers come...
Ah, but the FPS gain is a wondrous thing! I run most my personal forts this way; strategic lever positioning, a large military force, and a healthy dose of paranoia mostly make up for the sudden invasions and whatnot. It's tricky, but do-able.

Good stuff. Are you accepting dorfing?
Sure! Toss me a name and whatever preferences you might have-- gender, profession, whatever-- and I'll try to make it happen.  ;)
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Splint

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2019, 07:32:22 pm »

I do a ton of above ground stuff, so I prefer the extra room myself, but I feel ya. And even with it, you would not believe how restrictive it actually is doing nearly everything topside and not being able to do some serious bulk housing units for aesthetics' sake.

I'd also recommend an update post to plonk all the story/proper update stuff on and linking it in the OP. Some people probably won't wanna trawl random chatter and contributions just to get to the next update.

Superdorf

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Earthentomb: Life is mushrooms, mushrooms is life
« Reply #6 on: July 29, 2019, 08:02:19 pm »

I chose my embark site carefully. The embark site is absolutely flat, perfect for building...

The dwarves waste no time making their mark on the landscape.


Where once was a defunct supply wagon, soon becomes
Spoiler: and a hole. (click to show/hide)

(Is this, like, some kind of instinctual territory-marking thing for dwarves? Like, instead of peeing on things, they destroy the local vegetation and dig holes in the ground?)

As soon as the hole is wide enough
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Uvash the planter scurries down to fill it with mushrooms.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

By the time Uvash gets a decent farm-plot going, Mosus the miner has finished widening another portion of the hole.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
This hole is also filled with mushrooms.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At this point, our drink supply is running a bit low

(y'know, probably-- without a dedicated bookkeeper, everybody's content to just call it "ten-ish"--)


After awhile, Mosus digs out a stone hole.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
This is used... for eating mushrooms.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Aren't mushrooms just wonderful?


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« Last Edit: July 30, 2019, 03:07:16 pm by Superdorf »
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NRDL

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2019, 08:11:59 pm »

Sure! Toss me a name and whatever preferences you might have-- gender, profession, whatever-- and I'll try to make it happen.  ;)

Thanks! Just name me Nix, and make me your first axedwarf. Here's to death and glory.


And I've forgotten how neat everybody else makes their starting farms and facilities. I'd always just slapdash a rectangle with no dividing walls and put everything in there.
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Superdorf

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2019, 08:26:26 pm »

I do a ton of above ground stuff, so I prefer the extra room myself, but I feel ya. And even with it, you would not believe how restrictive it actually is doing nearly everything topside and not being able to do some serious bulk housing units for aesthetics' sake.
Hm, yes... ambitious projects, ambitious embark-sizes. Fortunately (?), I've not the patience for truly grand construction-- I'm more inclined to set up basics, maybe a curtain wall if I'm feeling fancy, and call it good. The magma's the real project here! :D

I'd also recommend an update post to plonk all the story/proper update stuff on and linking it in the OP. Some people probably won't wanna trawl random chatter and contributions just to get to the next update.
Ooh, yes! I'll slap something together. Could even put "Next Post" "Previous Post" links in the updates proper! I rather liked that in "The Littlest Cheesemaker"; it made things much more convenient.

Sure! Toss me a name and whatever preferences you might have-- gender, profession, whatever-- and I'll try to make it happen.  ;)

Thanks! Just name me Nix, and make me your first axedwarf. Here's to death and glory.
It shall be done, sirrah!
Er, d'you have a gender preference? 'Cos the good general's female. I could give her a hammer or something and wait for migrants if you like?

And I've forgotten how neat everybody else makes their starting farms and facilities. I'd always just slapdash a rectangle with no dividing walls and put everything in there.
It's strange, really-- I'm terribly sloppy with the rest of my life, but my dwarf-fortresses are these tight-packed organized little things...  ::)
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Splint

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2019, 08:31:44 pm »

Actually yeah, a next/previous post thing would do the job nicely!  :D

Also, a macedwarf if you would be so kind and have need of one. Smashy smashy. Splint for a dude, Brace for a chick.

NordicNooob

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2019, 08:36:24 pm »

Damnit! The snarkiness tables have turned again! You're totally wrong about how dwarves mark their territory though. Dwarves mark their turf with vomit, the unlooted socks of their enemies, and scorched earth. Also, you need like, a bunch more goblins, a mere thousand is what you'd want in like, one siege, not as a total population to wage war against. Boy do I have the world for you!


Lastly, heck, dwarf me. Pick some random shmuck, preferrably somebody getting drafted, and slap a nickname on them so you at least think about it for a second when they inevitably die.
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NRDL

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2019, 01:28:52 am »

Female is great, won't matter much to the goblins what gender my dorf is.
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Superdorf

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Earthentomb: Dig deep!
« Reply #12 on: July 30, 2019, 11:11:26 am »

Right then!
Her life's been pretty boring so far, but that'll soon change...

Mosus is skilling up nicely on all this clay and whatnot. In no time at all he's thrown up some workspace around the dining room
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
carved out a little bedroom flat
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
and now he's digging down for magma.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
With luck, we'll have our forges up before the winter's out!

Well, it's not long before Mosus hits a complication.


Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am irritated by the disruption of my beautiful stairway... we'll have to drop magma on it later. In the meantime, Mosus simply goes around and keeps digging. I have the wall plugged up with a bit of siltstone



and everybody gets on with their lives like nothing happened. Simple!

With basic survival all taken care of, I start to consider the question of trade goods. I'd really rather not cheese the system with prepared meals and spiked wooden balls and whatnot. I need something easily produced and reasonably valuable, but I'd like it to be something a dwarfish Mountainhome might find actually useful... ooh! I know!



Shields! Everybody likes shields!



I get a shield! You get a shield!



Everybody gets a shield!



Shields!


How do bards show up at taverns so fast? Do they, like, have some sort of bard spidey-sense that tells 'em when there's a new tavern to crash? Or... maybe they just kinda lurk at the edges of the embark site, and waltz on in once they hear the sweet sound of mediocre poetry? I dunno... but there he stands, reciting his mediocre poetry or whatever at Ingish the weaponsmith.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also a water buffalo and a camel. Why do we still have a water buffalo and a camel? I don't want water buffalos. Or camels. I want meat. Nice juicy meat. Why is my meat supply still hanging out in the dining room on its own legs when my dwarves could be eating those legs? This must be remedied.



Much better.



Ugh, migrants.



I should be happy. We need migrants. But... I dunno... I've got everything nice and organized, just the way I want it, and then these migrants show up with their weird skillbatches and their redundant labor assignments and personality traits I need to read and potential military designation I need to assign... well, it's a pain.

Why would I need a fish cleaner? I don't use fisherdwarves. Like, ever. I can feed an entire fortress with the yield off two farmers tending an 11x11 farmplot; why would I bother with fisherdwarves?

So I name the fish cleaner "Nord" and hand him an axe and tell him "greetings and salutations, thank you for joining our glorious cause, you're in the army now".
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Only I don't actually hand him an axe, because the only axe I have is the woodcutting axe, so I tell him to go pratice his wrestling or something and maybe I'll find him a training axe later.

I'm gonna need a ton of glasswork, and I can never be bothered to set up proper archery ranges-- both skills are really rather valuable to me. I let Olon escape undrafted, and wait to see what other migrants show up...
...nope, that's all of them. Ah well.



Spoiler: More visitors. (click to show/hide)
Pretty standard fare. A dwarf bard and... wait. A gorlak lasher?

A gorlak lasher?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cooooool

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Apparently he wants to find this thing? I don't know what a "Lauded Dispersal" is. I pop over to the civ-screen to check the artifacts list...

Spoiler: ...ah. It's a boot. (click to show/hide)
...what use do a gorlak and a dwarf have for a human-size boot? Are they gonna beat people up with it or something?
Well. Whatever the reason. I hope this gorlak finds his boot. Any critter that hilariously adorable deserves to find its boot. Also a really big toothbrush. But mostly a boot.

Welp
so where's the magma?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Where's the magma?



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« Last Edit: August 14, 2019, 08:11:26 am by Superdorf »
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Splint

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Re: Earthentomb: An excercise in goblin-baiting (Community fort)
« Reply #13 on: July 30, 2019, 11:17:49 am »

Quote
the sweet sound of mediocre poetry

Clearly the first mispronounced term sends a rippling wave through the universe, summoning bards the world over to educate whatever stupid shit that said it.

Also this is a phrase I like more than I should, and for a project I have planned, really need an excuse to use it for.

Superdorf

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Earthentomb: *insert deranged cackling here*
« Reply #14 on: July 30, 2019, 03:37:29 pm »

After much exploratory excavation where the stone is warm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I finally find a level where the stone is not.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
By my reckoning, channeling down at the end of this shaft should safely reveal the magma sea! Now I just need to clear any useable rock out of the exploratories...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
..oog, this is gonna take awhile.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rock-hauling is gonna have to wait a bit, 'cos the caravan's here!



Strange. She seems pretty tough, tho. I approve.

What with all them wooden shields Id's been cranking out, and a few nice amulets off Olin the stonecrafter--



--we manage to scrounge up something over 13,000 dorfbucks for the caravan! Not bad at all... I grab more mushrooms, more mushroom juice, some books (frivolous, but I like 'em so sue me) and a few bits of metalwork for melting. It's not all that spectacular a haul, but it's a start!




Three more migrants!



We get another fish cleaner-- perfect for filling out the axe squad-- the marksdwarf Kogan, and her husband Kulet the novice bowyer. I have no use for novice bowyers (or any bowyers, really), so I nickname the bowyer "Splint" and draft him as our very first mace captain!


This dwarf will go far, methinks.




The exploratories are empty.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It's time to crack 'em open.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Ahhahaha
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
BEHOLD THE CROSS OF CLEANSING FIRE
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
REPENT AND BE SINGED
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
NOT SAVED... SINGED
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
BECAUSE IT'S MAGMA, SEE
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
IT'S A JOKE, SEE

GET IT

...

Everyone's a critic.



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« Last Edit: July 30, 2019, 08:59:57 pm by Superdorf »
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