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[StrikaAmaru]

Summer

At some point in the spring, the dwarves have elected a mayor. I found this out, because she just banned the export of weapon racks. Speaking of weapon racks, the mayoral rooms are dug, smoothed and assigned, but there are no armor stands, weapon racks, or cabinets and chests to fill them out. There’s also a distinct shortage of cabinets for the population too.

3rd Hematite. A clothier has been possessed! Ok fine, I’ll finish the stupid cloth processing layer…

17th hematite. The clothier made a rope reed toga. The real end product of her efforts, however, is the cloth layer:


As usual, this picture is from later, when all the work was done; namely, in mid-autumn, 9th Limestone. The plant cloth is above, in a stockpile wrapping around the workshops; that’s because most work will be done in plant cloth. Silk and wool cloth are separated off to the center; they’re mostly there for strange moods. Then comes the leather area; one workshop tends to be enough.

Below, there are empty bags, a food pile for the 4 dye-producing plants (now sitting empty), and a farmer’s workshop with assorted pile for quarry bushes; this workshop will be connected to the bag pile and the food pile, while the quern is also connected to the bags and its own food pile. This is how dye production is best controlled, in the absence of modding in a clear “grind dye” command/reaction.

Next, the dyer’s workshops. There’s a narrow stockpile for dye bags, in the tiles adjacent to them. On the left, there’s the thread area; once again, separated in plant, wool, and silk. This was done because I’d usually dye thread, not cloth; with the windfall from the elves, this kinda comes back to bite me, since I'll be dyeing cloth first (and weaving plant thread whenever that runs out).

22nd Malachite. Some migrants have arrived. They could have picked a better spot:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We now number 87, including 9 children (well, one child and 8 babies if you want to get technical).

13 galena. A human caravan has arrived; this makes me inordinately happy, for some reason. So apparently, only in the second year we wouldn’t get one.

Also on the 13th of Galena: a vile force of darkness has arrived. Here, let me laugh in sealed fort. The siege itself is quite anemic; only 16 goblins, none of which are archers. The only creatures on the surface are 3 zombies - a harpy corpse, an alpaca and a reindeer, which have come as pets with the spring migrant wave, but had been typically slow and got locked out with the harpies.


In the hopes of pulling zombies off the resurrecting area, I open the trap corridor. The plan is that the gobbos will come to the non-resurrecting area, and the corpses will come after them, rather than the other way around. The first step, at least, is working:


Goblins have come, retching and barfing all the way, until goop sickness has run its course. You can perhaps spot that patch of uniform green, roughly in the center of the screenshot; that’s not grass, that’s goblin vomit. A zombie alpaca comes after them, so it’s time to lock the corridor hatch. Goblins still advance, though, and have run into the weapon trap. They’ve dropped me a nice collection of 4 shields and weapons, of copper and iron. Then the tail of the siege returns to fight the alpaca. Three of their number die, on the same tile even, and so does the zombie. This makes 4 dead goblins total, with another dead in the resurrecting biome before all this.

The gobbo who used to be in the front of the troupe has recovered from the weapon trap; both his hands are broken, and he seems to have picked the better part of valor:


Now, it’s real fun to yank goblins’ chains, but we have guests in the trade depot. We’ve sold all the worn clothes, and the crafts we made since last autumn, and bought all the cheap barrels that were either empty or with milk/alcohol; then a selection of bags; leather and wool cloth; and all the food we could.


You see, I kinda take it for granted that dwarven stocks will overflow with food. Usually, that’s true. But usually, I also embark with sheep, set the chickens breeding in spring or summer at the latest, and cull all the animals in year 2 or even late year 1. Obviously, I didn’t do any of that in this playthrough. Food stocks have reached a staggering zero, about 3-4 weeks ago, and I was only saved by rapidly processing sweet pods to barrel, milking+cheese making, slaughtering the yak cow from the elves, and crafting lavish meals from the resulting foodstuffs.

27th. With trading concluded, we go back to the goblins. The corridor has been unlocked, but none of the remaining 11 are moving; they are under assault by ravens too, but they’re keeping station on top of the alpaca and their 3 dead colleagues. Their boss is among the corpses, so that’s probably why.

[TheFlame52]

They're waiting for him to get back up so they can march together.

[StrikaAmaru]

Autumn.

6th Limestone. Goblins are doing nothing, zombies are doing nothing; screw this, I’m going back to the fort. Our rooms are progressing nicely: two pods of 10 each have been dug out and given to married dwarves; this means 40 (plus 2 for mayor and wife) of our dwarves have good-sized (if sparsely furnished) bedrooms to call their own. A third pod is being prepared; the fourth is postponed because the miners are busy digging exploratory shafts, right now.


At level 106, I carved the smallest dining room I ever made: it holds 10 tables, 10 chairs, and stockpiles for drink and prepared meals. The only flaw here is that I forgot to forbid barrels for prepared meals, so now there are 3 barrels occupied with 4 items; and that’s exactly why I don’t allow barrels in the prepared food stockpile. No matter, the fort’s hungry enough the problem will resolve itself. The other room is a dormitory; here dwarves without a spouse will have plenty of chances to find one. Because I’m not giving rooms to single people; in communist BoatMurdered, the state wants you married, citizen!


On the surface, there are now 10 goblins. I don’t see a fifth dead one, so I guess they have a new deserter. They are doing exactly what I want them, and are on the cusp of perma-killing this reindeer zombie:


Also on the 6th: Thank whatever gods are watching, at least it’s not another possession:


While Inod goes to make some new piece of exquisite garbage, I will move on to my own burning issues.

Firstly, the food: this is dealt primarily through Dwarf Therapist. I order all animals by profession to separate the adults, then order them by their physical attributes; every one of them with stats below 25 will get axed. This threshold will get upped, as time passes and animals multiply. Lastly, I group them by caste, to ensure I’m not accidentally exterminating an entire species from my stocks. The result is that 22 animals are marked for slaughter.

Second, metal industry gets some focus. With sieges already having begun despite not having yet hit 300,000 dorfbucks (or even 200,000 for that matter, when the first siege arrived in the summer, the total value of the fort was around 170,000), I’m no longer restrained with my metal melting and crafting.

In the smithy area, I made a very special pile: all categories there have enabled only metal items, and only of less than excellent quality.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is, in essence, the scrap metal pile; it’s the lowest and largest, since it won’t take any bins to reduce the clutter. Above it are the piles for the steel industry - flux stone a bit bigger, coal a bit smaller, iron. At the top, it’s more or less ‘random metals area’ - copper, silver, and a miscellaneous ores pile, currently overflowing with gold.


I order gold bars to be smelted on repeat in the topmost smelter; we already have a great metalcrafter and master blacksmith, in the presence of Stukos Ilashigun, so all furniture will be made from these. We can afford it.

While this is done, miners are digging exploratory tunnels; I know there is coal and marble on the map already, the problem is finding them. Then steel will be made, and our legendary +5 armorsmith will get to work. Hematite is already being queued for smelting.

The military is being restructured; the single squad of marksdwarves will be split in two, mostly by male and female lines; many a dwarfette seems to be both caring for a child, and good with a crossbow. The ladies will be called as the second wave, and kept out of melee range as much as possible. Also, for the first time in the history of this fort, there will be a melee squad.

10th Limestone. We have struck bituminous coal! Finally! Now to get that marble, and we can get steel. For extra points, the vein is also running through a spot of gypsum; our medical woes are one step closer to self-sufficiency.


13th. Inod has completed a reindeer bone animal trap. This pushes her woodcarving skills from grand-master (level 14) to legendary +5 (level 20, maximum possible); she’s immediately set to making totems, and nail crafts. The artifact is only notable by its name, absurd even by auto-gen standards:


27th Limestone. I should NOT have left that trap corridor open; the human merchants have exited through it, and got assaulted by the previously placid goblins. Welp, them’s the works. If next summer comes with trouble, I’ll at least know why.

4th Sandstone. The goblins have finished slaughtering humans, and have gone back to their vigil above their dead boss. I’d like to say the humans have given as good as they got, except they clearly didn’t: 2 new dead gobbos (and one deserter, who I presume got wounded) for 4 humans, all of them guards.


And I just cleaned the surface this spring…

5th Sandstone. The first cavern layer got a bit more deadly:


I say a bit, because water isn’t known as a great building material. The vapors are a complication, though. I wonder if that shell can be collected…


Incidentally, this is why I sealed the downward passage; when I will finally tackle the beasts in the caverns, I’d like to deal with a single layer’s worth of abominations.

11th. More work for the idlers has presented itself. I noted some barrels left in the old stockpile; they have mixed plants, which no longer fit in a single stockpile. Since dwarves are lazy and/or stupid, they’re not going to remove the plants from the barrel to haul in the new food stockpiles; they’ll just ignore them unless they can use said plants in a reaction.

So I’m going to order them mass dumped. Then navigate to each barrel, and order it un-dumped. This will leave the contents of the barrels marked for dumping, and the resident bunch of geniuses will finally empty the unused barrels.


And because I don’t completely hate my dwarves, I’ll set up a temporary dumping zone nearby.

I’m making rock salt pots. They’re a reasonable alternative to wooden barrels; a rock salt rock pot (heh) weighs 10 units of whatever uppercase gamma means in the game’s internal logic; probably kilograms. This is better than a larch barrel, weighing 11 gamma, and ashen and tower-cap barrels, at 12 gamma. It’s still worse than a willow barrel, which weighs 7; though if I carved large pots out of jet, or bituminous coal, I could match that. But I haven’t found jet, and coal is used elsewhere, so dwarves will have to deal.

25th. Oh right, the mayor’s rooms are still unfurnished. Have some gold furniture, of excellent and masterwork quality.

5th Timber. The surviving seven goblins have not yet left; the dwarven caravan will soon arrive, and the outpost liaison with it, so I’m hoping they’ll skedaddle at the 3 month mark.

Incidentally, it is at this time that I remove plant gathering from anyone except the designated military. The point being, I may need to station military in an area on the surface, but I wouldn’t want them to loiter doing nothing.
 
13th. As if by miracle, the siege is lifted the exact second that the caravan arrives. Honestly, there were maybe 100 ticks between the two events; behold, gobbos leaving as the caravan announcement is shown:


14th. A vile force of darkness has arrived! One squad is in the same spot the outpost liaison has spawned; I know it’s a coincidence, but I’d still draw ‘conclusions’ from this if I were role-playing. The liaison made it in, by the way; these guys are fast. I don’t think I ever saw an outpost liaison that moved slowly. I’m going to blame natural selection.

There are 3 squads of 16: 2 squads of crossbow goblins, and one of mace goblins; supporting them, is a half-squad of 8 ogresses, all females for some reason; these last ones spawned on the goop, in the north-west corner. Everyone else spawned on the eastern edge.

Oh well, on with the training, and the smithing, and the trading, and the hauling, and the… Honestly, there's so much to do inside the fort, I wouldn't go outside even if it were safe and clear.

We traded for, once again, all of the wood, barrels, and fish. I also picked some quivers and waterskins; and some leather, to craft more of the same.

Incidentally, I should have mentioned this while describing the armor: our military has drinks allowed, but not food. I learned to do this the hard way, due to dropped and rotting food. When a military dwarf goes off-duty, usually at the end of a 2-month cycle, they'd drop the food which they carried as a military dwarf; but it would still be assigned to them, so nobody could touch it - meaning it would rot wherever it was dropped. It's possible this only happens if they have no backpack, but I don't know for sure.

Also, the crossbow squads get 500 bolts each; this allows each dorf to pick up 50 bolts, which is, as far as I know, the maximum amount of bolts that a dorf can carry.

[StrikaAmaru]

Winter

We finally hit the marble layer; or at least one of them. The first discovered one is on level 100, same as living area; it’s under the resurrecting biome, and far enough that digging it out won’t bother any sleeping dwarves. This means the near future is occupied with digging marble, hauling marble, and smelting steel.

That’s also why this seasonal report is so short.

At some point in the proceedings, a new forgotten beast has spawned, again in the first cave; it’s interesting because it’s a web-spewer, and might offer a solution to our lack of silk:


While the digging and hauling are done, I take the time to check on the ‘missing’ dwarves. Mego isn’t the only one with absent remains; Gizogin, Deathsword, and Vucar Rallaven all have no corpses, all got slabs, and were finally put to rest:


It’s also noteworthy that Mego’s partial skeleton has vanished from the stockpile, and from the stock listing. It was not buried; it was not dumped; it was not moved. It’s just gone.

20th Obsidian. The goblins have left; their presence has been just about the dullest thing that has happened in this fort so far. The gobbos themselves have caused no troubles for the fortress, and also none of the usual wild-death has been present to cause trouble for the gobbos. Instead, their stay was blessed with a chaining of very much living wombats, skunks and owls. They probably left disappointed… can just about picture a goblin’s after-action report:

“Camped outside fortress for three months. Saw no combat. Saw no loot. Saw no slaves. Saw no undead. Did see a bunch of pitiful critters, not even worth killing. Froze me ass off in the middle of winter. 1 out of 5, would not siege again.”

I would regret not having all this time for surface cleaning and wood-cutting, but I’m perfectly happy with all the steel we’re smithing, and all the armor we’ll be forging.

[StrikaAmaru]

Year 4

Once again, we had an extremely early migrant wave. Once again, the morons spawned on the goop. Once again, all their animals have died. Once again, the migrants made it in with no casualties, and with... some incident.

I did not get the exact time of their arrival, but the dwarves were fortunate enough to not share the map with any undead. They did share it with 3 harpies, who almost left everybody alone - except an unfortunate brewer, upon whom they descended, and started kicking the everloving crap out of.

The archers have been mobilized; I may send dwarves to their deaths, but by Armok’s proverbial bloody beard, I don’t surrender dwarves to their deaths (not against weak-ass harpies at least). The brewer has been retrieved, and is resting in the hospital:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We’re now at 102 dwarves. The harpies were replaced with benign fauna, and I deem it a great time for spring cleaning. And what a spring cleaning it was! Every item outside the goop, and many of those close on the goop, have been claimed and moved. A whole bunch of trees were cut down. Hospital items were placed in the hospital. The anvil from the surface was finally, finally, moved indoors; only took us three whole years.

This continued, again with no incidents, until the 10th of Felsite, when I called everybody indoors, in expectation of the elven merchants, and the goblin siege. Three cats have been puffing miasma from stepping on mist puddles, and swiftly died. We’ve not lost anything important, because we’re edging into a catsplosion; not bad enough to take measures harsher than cat biscuits, but eventually I’ll have to set a cat storage cage.

18th Felsite. A kobold ambush has arrived on the goop; it’s composed of 4 spearmen, and one swordsman (for varying values of man). They had the enormous bad luck, or perhaps suicidal overconfidence, to pass by the last undead on the surface - a harpy. She then proceeded to wipe out the whole troupe; the sword-bold has managed to escape off the map edge:


19th. The elves arrive. They promptly lose a two-legged rhino lizard and a bat from their crappy cages. Meh.

I buy a female dingo to go with the male we already have; and two female kestrels. Unless I’m mistaken, kestrels in DF hunt vermin just as cats do, but don’t pose the risk of a catsplosion - at least not without the overseer trying really hard.

(Way later edit: I was wrong - peregrines, not kestrels, hunt vermin. Look for tiercel peregrine and peregrine falcon - the two sexes have different names, for some reason).

[StrikaAmaru]

Summer

Summer passes without excitement, until the middle; on the 11th of Malachite, we come across some accidental mist science: seems I was wrong about the mist stopping at the biome border:


Places where the mist has flown end up mixed in the deadly concoction that kills just about everyone without good shoes:


At the end of Galena, we have ourselves a goblin ambush. Too bad they found muskoxen:

[StrikaAmaru]

Autumn

At the turn of autumn, another ambush finds the very same muskoxen. They proceed to charge, heedless of all the fresh corpses of their kin. I don’t see any of them surviving past Limestone, so they’re probably going to remain irrelevant (unless the poor outpost liaison has the misfortune to spawn right among them):


26th the Sandstone. Guess who arrived on the surface:


I’m going to trap him and use him against goblins or undead; I’d put him as bait for forgotten beasts, but in this version I’m quite sure they won’t fight.

He runs across the weapon trap first, and treats us to some impressive dodging:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then he gets bagged. A bunch of undead also path into the fort; 4 kobolds and 2 goblins. Goblins can be handled by traps, but kobolds require military intervention. In what could probably be handled better, I station the military in an airlock chamber, made to connect (or isolate) the trap corridor from the rest of the fort. The dwarves arrive at about the same time as the kobolds, and dwarven bolts make quick work of unarmored shambling corpses. The only thing left now is to temporarily station some squad into the trap corridor, for no other reason than to reclaim the hatch used by kobolds.

I should probably mention that at some point in the summer, before the zobolds entered the fort, I made an atom smasher and dumped all the corpse bits. Also, the catacombs have been completed, and I’m quite happy with how they came out:


The above is a composite picture, hence the little weirdness in the downward passage - it was not screenshotted in the bottom section. As to the coffins, only the yellow ones are occupied, and of those, two are free. Some coffins are still assigned to corpse-less dwarves who got slabs engraved, but I don’t care enough to free them.

17th of Timber. The caravan has arrived. Phew. I was beginning to fear they were not going to show this year.

19th. An ambush! Pity them! Once again, they’re on the opposite side of the map, and running face-first into zombie muskoxen. If any of them can be said to be lucky, they’re sufficiently far away from the muck that they will at least stay dead. Their boss (a hammerman) and four axe-goblins get killed before the remaining four crossbow-goblins decided to run. Only three make it out the edge.


The mountain home wants to make us a barony! After a bit of leafing through Dwarf Therapist, the honor falls on the current mayor, who only wants armor stands some of the time. She’ll do fine...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[archivis]

[StrikaAmaru]

Winter

With trading concluded and the start of winter, I’ll begin some general-purpose fortress refactoring: the unused area at the right of the stairs has been made into a new hospital to replace the old one in the old fort, which officially leaves level 117 unused. There’s nothing there now but empty corridors. Mass-designations are going to become much simpler.

Below the farming area, a dedicated wood-burning area has been assigned; the tree farm produces sufficient wood to allow for a trickle of ashes, and consequently soap. The ashery shares the room with a stockpile for all the seeds; it’s set to give to the main farming pile, which only takes the 6 underground seeds.

A washing area, with accompanying soap pile, has been set in the corner of the tree farm. There’s a well in the hospital, made from a kimberlite block bought from the dwarven merchants; we’ve yet to hit kimberlite on this map.


I must admit: trying to manage dwarves with means other than mass-nicknaming has been a failure. Granted, there are 100 dwarves here, which is the max population number in my forts until I upgrade to a better laptop, but I still wished I’d have managed. So I return to my old ways, and run through all the 91 adult dwarves, checking for highest skills and mental issues. The end result of this is that I filled out my military: the two old archer squads got assigned a few more people who were unskilled but had no susceptibility to mental issues, and a brand new melee squad has been created, from the rest of the talentless hacks. Well only half accurate: the old melee squad has been split in half, again by gender, and now we have 40 military dwarves, 20 male and 20 female, 20 melee and 20 crossbow.

At the closing of the year, two kobold ambushes have been spotted by undead, and subsequently wiped out, inside the resurrecting biome. This is as good an incentive as any to redo the cage trap corridor; it’s really not made to deal with kobolds. It’s also a quick and dirty hack from the first year, which has survived long past its best-by date. All temporary solutions become permanent...

There are 2 priorities in the near future:

Firstly, that trap corridor is an embarrassment to all dwarvenkind. Either I’m going to do it right, or decommission it entirely.

Secondly, clothes. Besides the normal wear & tear inherent in a fort’s life, we also had no fewer than 9 babies growing into children this year; all the clothes we picked from the surface have been claimed, and so have most of the clothes remaining in the fort. Those 17 bins of cloth that I got from the elves? They’re gone. They were made into clothes, and they will soon not be enough. Eight dwarves have been appointed for plant processing, weaving, dyeing, and nothing else. Among them, three are also clothiers. Some have skills, others don’t. Either way, their future has been decided.

After these are done, the caverns need to be handled. The first cave layer is currently home to 2 forgotten beasts; one is a relatively weak and worthless frog composed of water, of all things. The other is a beakless hawk who spews webs; this one may be important in economic terms, though not as much as a giant cave spider. It’s still a source of frustration for me that the game prices silk from forgotten beasts on the same tier as plain cave spider silk.

While we’re here, a note on fortress happiness levels:


The one dissenter is Oddom Delentarem, or SteelFates. He is a clothier, and he has 6 separate bad thoughts about having bare feet. He is currently throwing a tantrum to our poor mayor, while also beating a random cat:


The cat is fine, by the way; only got grabbed by the paw, a bit too forcefully.

In the cloth processing area, it seems only one dwarf has begun weaving. There still are several bits of cloth, and a pair of ready-made shoes, so I line up just some socks. When Oddom is done bitching, he can make his own damn socks.

While we’re on the subject of thread and cloth, there’s something else I ought to make in the hospital: a dumping area, where I put all the spun hair:


While I won’t claim to fully understand the criteria based on which dwarven medics select their thread for suturing, plonking a pile of hair in the hospital seems to greatly encourage them picking it instead of other threads (like, say adamantine).

10th Obsidian. I made a mistake: Oddom the Ever-Bitching is not complaining about a lack of socks and shoes - he has those. He’s complaining about a lack of pants; I am a bit more sympathetic now: if I had to walk around with my ass in the breeze, I’d throw a tantrum too. Seeing as I just wasted our few bits of cloth making not yet critical socks, I queue up 10 leather pants.

16th. A new kobold ambush comes from the north, and finishes off the zombie barn owl that outed them. They won’t fare as well against everything else, but best of luck, lizard-puppies.


Setting up a gaggle of small meeting areas and food storage areas, at about 10 levels distance - this means 106, 96, 86, and 76; incidentally, I’m out of tables and chairs:

   
Our single available rope has been built, and made into a jail; if it gets used, it will be for some missed mandate or something equally silly, so I won’t particularly punish the dwarf. And a dwarf is indeed punished - a smith who failed to craft armor stands, for our exalted baroness (who I’m quite sure was only a mayor at the time of the ‘crime’). Anyway, food and booze will be produced to fill up all stockpiles.

[StrikaAmaru]

Year 5 (506)

Spring has arrived in the middle of plotting the cage corridor upgrades. The new design has 2 ‘internal’ corridors enclosed with fortifications, and 3 ‘external’ corridors for invaders. The internal corridors are where the marksdwarves will be stationed, and the external ones are for invaders and undead to be delayed and slaughtered in.

The new trap corridor will extend over 2 levels, in the hopes that this will hamper any enemy marks- or bow-people from shooting my own. Another design goal for it is that I’d like it to function in two modes: the dangerous mode puts invaders through a gauntlet of marksdwarves and weapon traps, while the (relatively) harmless one bypasses the winding corridors, and allows access to the fort in a straight line (and across a row of cage traps). This one’s intended mostly for any outpost liaisons, migrants, and for animals or other creatures that are trappable.

To support the building which will doubtlessly be done, I set up a bar stockpile, set to only accept some gray and black stone blocks - diorite, rhyolite, dacite and phyllite. The walls and fortifications will be grey and the floor black.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

Said bar pile also brings to my attention the caged animals that I had bought from the elves. I decide to dismantle the food stockpile in level 96 (this neatly solves my table and chair shortage for the other levels) and build a zoo there:


The two kestrels are also moved into the poultry zone. They're both female, and won’t be able to breed until I get a male - which depends entirely on the elves. It doesn't help my mood that the two have terrible stats, and would have been long-slaughtered if they weren't the only ones of their kind in the fort.

While the hauling is underway, the miners are digging out a bar stockpile, next to the smithy. The amount of metal bars within the fort is already quite large, and it's bound to only get larger:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Usually, I’d place it above, but that’s not really viable here.



All the warm tiles will be dug out, since I already know the magma’s under them. The wet tiles have less certainty attached, though some inferences can still be made: the left and center spots can be dug out safely, for instance, because there’s not enough room for them to conceal a water source - they’d have to be 3 wide at least, so it’s a good bet these tiles are wet because of a water source above. The wet tiles among the gems seem like a flood risk - until I notice the dry gem tile. Digging that one out assures me that yes, this too is wet only from above:


8th Slate. It has just dawned on me that the fort has no butcher and tannery; I’ll build a butcher’s shop, and 2 adjacent tanneries, in an enclosed room within the pig pasture. Strictly speaking, there’s no need to hide away the butchery - animals won’t become panicked by the sight of butchery until DF 2014. But I still think it’s a good habit to get into.

17th of Felsite. The elves have arrived. For once, they’ve managed to hold all their critters in cages. As always, I assemble all the worn clothing scattered around the fort, and some kobold rags that got picked up on surface cleanup. In return, I buy all 33 logs that the elves have brought, 12 cloth bins, some random rope reed clothing items (I couldn’t tell you exactly which, as the full description was cut off - rope reed left/right something-or-other)... and some of the more interesting animals: a giant kangaroo, a giant emu and a giant bushtit (yes, Google Dictionary, that is in fact a word; if you don't believe me, google it).

There were no other animals that I particularly cared about; in particular, I’m looking for another kestrel, and something war-trainable - grizzly bears would be great. At least the zoo is being used:


With that in mind, I also line up some totems, and gift the elves 800☼ - perhaps that’s undwarvenly behavior, but they have a monopoly, so I see no choice but to shut up and play nice.

[StrikaAmaru]

Summer

Summer begins with most dwarves working on the trap corridor. The only dwarves exempt from construction are those connected to the clothing industry - the farmers, who are harvesting spring crops and planting pig tails in their place, and all the weavers/dyers/millers/clothiers in the cloth layer. Another change in the cloth layer - I’ve deactivated all cloth and thread stockpiles, to stop dwarves from getting bogged down hauling each and every single thread and bolt of cloth. They have better things to do.

16 Hematite. At the beginning of summer, a cyclops appeared on the muck; he died the next day, I didn’t even get around to screenshot him let alone herd him towards the corridor for trapping. Predictably, he engaged all the nearby undead, which caused him to get coated in nauseating muck. Then he became sufficiently ill that he was unable to defend himself from the gaggle of undead surrounding him.

An ignoble end, for a supposed semi-megabeast. Not that he'd have a more glorious fate if he'd have made it off the muck, and into the traps.

The corridor is almost done, the last weapon trap is in the course of being built - I left 3 corkscrews out with intent to build a mist generator. We don’t strictly need it, but seeing as we’re on top of an aquifer, this seems like an opportunity. The other trap contains 3 bows picked from the surface; I’ll make a point to construct all captured bows into weapon traps. I do enjoy the sheer irony of having our enemy’s dedicated weapons of war be turned against them, and is a great deal more satisfying than to simply melt them.


And the corridors themselves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The southern portion required a raised section, to allow access corridors to run beneath. It would have been better to run these corridors on z-2, but that's not possible - the aquifer reigns there.

The entire assemblage is controlled from its own dedicated room, filled with levers whose positioning reflects the bridge to which they're linked.

The bottom lever connects to the outer bridge; from what I recall, this is the first bridge-lever linkage in the fort, as well as the first bridge and lever. It will also be deconstructed, as soon as I ensure that the new lever connects correctly to the bridge.

19th Hematite. The greater dwarven hivemind has decided to change the mayor. A woodcutter, Inod PaddleGrooved, is about to be installed in the mayoral suites currently occupied by the baroness.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The goit likes adamantine and animal traps; I foresee a lot of jailed dwarves in the future, ‘cause I’m not wasting anything on weapon traps, and even if I had adamantine, I wouldn’t spend it on this guy’s requests. The only upside is that we’ll have an easy time complying should he ever forbid their export.

Our baroness, Goden GearBoulder (not to be confused with our marksdwarfette Goden FieryBasements), will be appointed the rooms dug out since year 2 on the stairway. Enjoy the obsidian suite, my lady, complete with that rose gold armor stand that you've desired for at least half a year.


20th Hematite. I do declare the trap corridor to be finished! Now would be time to station the two marksdwarves squads in each of the corridors, and open the corridor to the outside!

25th Hematite. I forgot to restrict civilians to burrow; my reminder has been when dwarves met zobolds. 5 zombified kobolds have found the path to the fortress. 4 got rekt at the inner airlock - 2 archers, 2 by the hastily called melee squads. The fifth, a later straggler, was shot from the fortifications before even descending the first ramp.


4th Malachite. No other undead moves on the surface; I release the military, close the outer bridge, and let dwarves clean up the corpses. Also mark all internal trees and shrubs for collection, quite a few have grown.

27th Malachite. Our dear mayor promptly pisses me off by demanding 3 animal traps. As discussed above, I won’t make them. I’d better go make more jail ‘rooms’; first I’ll have to make some silver chains… and a few beds, too.

28th Malachite. For some strange reason, no one has hauled the kobold corpses. The hatch is opened, there are no travel restrictions, there are idlers in the fort, everybody received Refuse Hauling. By all rights, those corpses should be in the refuse pile. Needless to say, they rotted, and have doused the trap corridors in miasma. I'll leave them for now, and after they finish rotting, I’ll remove and re-add the refuse stockpile; it happened before that the pile itself glitches somehow.

12th Galena. The human caravan arrived; that was early…

… possibly because they didn’t have much of anything. I bought one bar of aluminium, some leather bins, and one batch of iron bolts. This cleared the loose clothing from the fort. Once again, I forgot to screenshot the trade, but it was less than 2000☼

[StrikaAmaru]

Year 5, Autumn

6th Limestone. Autumn has arrived. I learned something today: giant kangaroos are grazers. While looking through the list of animals that should be slaughtered, I noticed the giant kangaroo we got from elves was starving. It is now the first on the chopping block.

The highlight of the autumn has been the slaughter of 44 animals; there are several pets which have garbage stats, but obviously they cannot be butchered; I’m contemplating a solution involving either a pasture ‘accidentally’ set in the trap corridor, or temporarily setting the atom smasher as a pit. Probably the first, since I dimly recall pets can’t be pitted.

On a very much related note, the catsplosion has become… bothersome. A cage has been built next to the butcher/tanner room, and will be filled with all the ladies:


Or, as you may know, all the ladies that aren’t owning a dwarf. Those, I have no choice but to let roam, and breed as the mood fancies them. This makes the whole process of limiting cat breeding rather pointless; all it takes for fertilization is that a male and a female are somewhere on the map and out of a cage. Distance and walls are all immaterial. Inevitably, I'll have to go and kill most of the owned female cats; it really is quite a pity, since they mostly have good stats by now.

Trade with the mountainhome has happened, with nothing notable to speak of; I acquired garnierite and a few chunks of kimberlite that I ordered last year. No cloth or leather was brought, so none was gotten.

If there's a summation to the season that has passed, "nothing notable" is as good as it gets. It was just... dull.

[StrikaAmaru]

Winter, Part 1

Winter carries on in equal drabness as the autumn, until the the 6th of Opal; then, I nearly lost a dorf. Our high-master clothier Reg TradeMyth has been possessed; a normally ignored and unremarked event, seeing as possessions are the least useful, and my least-favorite mood. This might have proven fatal to old Reg, who required 3 bolts of spider silk in a fort which only had 2; I quickly set all looms to weave 8 silk each, and Reg’s mood has continued without incident:


14th. Upon the surface, we receive a new reminder that strength is worthless if it cannot be brought to bear: a humble zombie skunk has killed off an ogre couple, who’d wondered on the nauseating goop and were rendered incapable of defending themselves:


Or at least I believe that’s what happened. The combat log doesn’t register the deathly blow, merely a series of bites and charges. I would blame the mist, but there’s no trace of it - both corpses, the tiles they’ve fallen in, and the zombie skunk are clear of that particular contaminant. I have no real idea what killed these otherwise-unassailable beasts.

15th. Reg TradeMyth has finished his artefact: it’s a single sock, with a ridiculous name:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

20th. With little else to do, I might as well begin dealing with the beasts in the caverns. And since fair fights are most emphatically for suckers, my first step into this reckoning is to set up a sniping area:


Its basic principles resemble the trap corridor above; a narrow corridor forces marksdwarves to walk next to fortifications, and anything visible past the fortifications is going to get shot at. Anything, such as the Forgotten Beast Thining Esnunor, the enormous beakless hawk that spews webs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

24th. Thining got killed. It now lays next to the entrance, in a pool of blood and bolts.


In the hopes of securing the webs spread into the corridor, I quickly queue up web collections jobs. There were only 2 tiles with webs on the inside, but the dwarves extract 9 silk threads from them:

[StrikaAmaru]

Year 5, Winter part 2:

6th Obsidian. Happenings are happening outside the trap corridor - corpses of harpies, wombats, and a skunk litter the entry:


The main culprit is one of the ogres who died in mysterious circumstances less than a month ago:


9th. With the military in position, I order the bridge lowered, and the ogress enters the fort immediately:


Then she passes below the first maksdwarf squad, without even a single bolt being fired:


This... this is a problem. I order both squads to head towards the southern end, where the corridor is raised; then at least they'll have a brief moment of visibility. The first squad doesn't reach it in time, which is understandable - they were both the furthest away, and had the smaller window of opportunity. The second squad gets there in time, and shoots the ogress, right before she'd reach the first of the weapon traps:


A handful of other stragglers make their way in; two goblins, a kobold, and a harpy, all undead. All fall to the newly-repositioned dwarves, which is amazingly little comfort. The trap corridor isn't going anywhere near as well as intended; and I have no easy fixes, besides either flooring the top level, or lowering the shooting galleries.

16th. The zombified cyclops has also reached the fort. As the last of the zombies, he receives the full attention of both squads, to little visible effect. He walks undeterred through all the bolt fire, across the two weapon traps, and makes his way towards the third section of the corridor, where all the feeble pets have been pastured:


Through all this, he’s been absorbing a truly ridiculous amount of damage:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then he gets caught in the first cage trap. Welcome to the fort.


23rd of Obsidian. Of all things I could be doing, I decide to initiate the construction of an outdoor farm. The main reason for this is thread - even set to maximum capacity as it is, the indoor farm is not going to suffice for the needs of the fort; especially if I'll move to a better laptop, and increase the population cap.

The future farm is set near the stairwell, and when it will be properly secured, it will be accessed through it. At the moment, all I'll be doing is to construct a box around the pit that we channeled in the first year.


28th. To cap off the year and frustrate my efforts, 7 elk corpses have arrived on the muck; thankfully, they seem content to remain on the opposite end of the map; but I still need to keep an eye on them.

[StrikaAmaru]

Year 6 (507). Spring

1st of Granite. Spring has arrived. A hen has died of old age. Its passing is mostly ignored, as the construction and cleanup occupies at least half the fort.

14th. The outside construction is done; the cleanup was even faster, despite a zombie getting a bead on the workers:


Now I can recall the workers, and see about preparing the future entry to the farm. Among the more potentially dangerous things I'll do in this fort, I will need to deconstruct the current down-stairs at the top of the stairwell, and replace them with up-down stairs; likewise, the floor above them needs to be deconstructed, and replaced with down-stairs.


20th. Uh... apparently floors can’t be deconstructed from below? Three tiles of floor have been marked, for the past 4 days, and nobody has come to deconstruct.  which surprises me, seeing as I was pretty sure that they can...


The old stairs are on top of a farm plot; won’t bother dismantling it. I recall that stairs and channels can be dug/constructed from below; let’s see how this goes:

 
23rd. Interestinger and interestinger. I remembered wrong, about the digging part at least. Trying to build a down-stair has led to another bit: down-stairs can be designated in the correct position, with an up-stair beneath, but not constructed. The poor assignations are eternally inactive.

I suppose that what I wanted to do as the first stage will end up being the last. Now I’m left with plotting out the actual outdoor farm, channeling, and roofing. After we secure enough rope reed thread, the place can be turned into an ‘outdoor’ meeting area; that should keep dwarves from becoming cave-adapted.

Ultimately, I give up detailed plans of farm arrangement, and channel a 21x21 area. In the long run, it will spend more time as meeting room and open air barracks than farm anyway:


The 2-wide vertical space between construction and pit was left on purpose - it aligns the wall of the pit with the walls on the level below, 116. Probably unimportant, but there we are.

3rd of Slate. In the second month of spring, a stray neuron in my brain has finally sparked - the ‘new’ area in which I’m trying to build (or dig) is not included in the proper burrow. D’oh!

I extend the inner 'general-purpose' burrow, and sure enough, the 3 tiles above the stairwell are being deconstructed. The old attempts at a breach, namely the ramp and up-stair, are no longer necessary, and are marked for destruction.

Also around this time, it occurs to me that 7x3=21. Namely, that I have a 21-wide future-farm, a central stairway that's 7 wide, a square side-room to the left, that's also 7-wide (and will probably hold outdoor seeds for the rest of time, despite the existing "no leaving fobiddable stuff on level 117" moratorium). This leaves another 7x7 room to the right. I've marked it for digging - I’m not sure what I’ll do in it, but I’ll definitely do something.


6th Slate. Our mayor has mandated the construction of another 3 cage traps; this one too shall be ignored. Maybe I should also add a table and chair in my makeshift prison, and move the bed one tile?


While we’re at it, I order more booze; that stockpile on the left is showing too many empty places.

8th. For one moment, I almost convinced myself that one of the two killed zombie goblins carried a spear. Then it occurs to me that’s not really possible, and the spear must have been lodged in the corpse, possibly by one of the unfortunate goblin’s living companions.


27th. Channeled the prospective farm; the next step would be roofing the place, to keep fliers from annoying dwarves. I could build a full stone roof, but for some reason, that seems a bit… cheaty.


Let's see if a glass roof is an option. Its execution would not be dangerous, merely tedious; I will need to collect sand, and if I settle for green glass, that will suffice. But if I want clear glass, I'll also need to burn trees to ash, then refine ashes into potash at the ashery, which will then get moved into the smithing area, next to the magma kiln so it can be turned into pearlash. This will then get combined with the sand to make a single block of clear glass. Which then needs to be hauled all the way to the surface.

Four glassmaker's workshops are constructed next to the stairwell; the level is black sand, so it's as good a place as any. A sand collection zone is established on a nearby tile, and the fort's only grate is built on top of it to keep it from being clogged with overgrowth:


13th Felsite. The elves have arrived, in the same moment that our countess has forbidden the export of armor stands. Once again, one of their animals makes a bid for freedom:

Friends of nature, huh? For all their lofty title and the arrogance that they justify with it, Nature doesn't really seem to give them the time of the day.

As is my habit when the elves arrive, I haul all the worn clothing to the trade depot. And this spring, I am baffled by just how few rags I have to offer; I take a quick look in Dwarf Therapist, and sure enough, about half the fort is wearing tattered clothing. I pause from handling trade in order to line up all clothing, except robes; we still have 10 in the clothier’s workshop.

On a lark, I also modify the {o}rders -> {W}orkshop settings, to only use dyed cloth. We've been dyeing cloth since... how long now? A year? More? We should have enough dyed cloth; and if we’re in real trouble, I’ll flip it back on.

Now returned to the trading menu, I search for every totem in the fort, and mark it for trade. If I’ll still need more, there are boxes of crafts nearby.

17th. An ambush has been spotted, engaging a single zombie goblin just off on the good side of the resurrecting biome. I certainly won’t mind if the gobbos volunteer to clean some of the undead.


Then they seem to head directly north, on the nauseating goop, to pick a fight with the zombies over there. I’m sure that will end up well for them. I’m going to lure them off the resurrecting biome after I get my ducks in a row with the elves - if only so no more garbage is accumulated on that biome.

18th A second ambush arrives, next to the future outdoor farm project. It engages and swiftly murderizes the flock of undead ravens that have arrived at the end of the previous month. Then they move towards the other creatures existing on the surface - the zombies on the goop.


I unlock the trap corridor; without stationing marksdwarves, because the goblin squads have brought two pointy stick launchers of their own, and because (as we have learned the past summer) the marksdwarves won’t shoot in the pit. For some reason.


20th. The second squad has reached the entry; they’re now accosted by one of the zombie harpies:


The goblin axewoman that is not visible above under that cyan X throws a fit, and chops the harpy a whole lot:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then she drops her shield, and promptly falls unconscious.

Her three squadmates slowly file into the corridor. After a day, she gets up and joins them. Her wounds are fairly nasty, and the muck smeared from the undead is certainly not making matters easier for her.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

24th. The second ambush has reached the weapon traps. One axe-goblin and the bowman die; the rest are briefly hesitant and turn around, but then they find their courage, and advance again into the fort. They walk past the now-stuck weapon traps, and... what is happening over there?

28th. An idiot marksdwarf is happening over there, that's what's happening over there. Despite the utter lack of military orders (and his squad being inactive, to boot! you can see he's painted in civilian colors) this little dumb-ass has decided to walk across all the cage traps, sit his hairy little ass in front of the goblins, and plink at them with bolts.


The goblins are not terribly bothered, and are still slowly advancing in the corridor, blocking where necessary. The marksdwarf eventually has some luck, and 2 of them fall unconscious. But the rest are advancing, and are nearly upon him.


I’m commanding both melee squads into the trap corridor. How they'll all manage, we'll see in the summer, because this season ends on a cliffhanger.