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[delphonso]

I'm still reading it, also what job did you give my dwarf and here's hoping it lives longer than the one I had in another fort.

Thanks for reading, boss. I just gave you a random dwarf - a clothier, who hasn't done any clothes work at all and is instead a farmer, mostly. She has quite a rare dream for a dwarf!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm glad to see that my labyrinth is finally seeing some (albeit limited) use!

I swapped out long hall of traps for atom smashing bridges mostly to avoid the stress of clean-up. I lost a fort to stress recently because I made my trap hallway too...bloody. 400 spinning glass serrated discs was very fun, but cleaning up and resetting was more than the fort could handle.

[King Zultan]

Awesome my dwarf might live to old age, unless the zombie apocalypse happens again, and is ruling the world a dream they can even accomplish?

[delphonso]

Winter 156
+Journal of the Gravekeeper+

-=~-=-~=-

Smallhands is a hive of activity as we close off the top level to the outside world. The bees return to their own schedules, small swarms protecting Smallhands. The distant sound of hammer and anvil set the pace for us to keep working. Wine, food, crafts for selling, armor and weapons, there is much to be made, and the time of my Over-bee-r-ship is ending.

The black sand of the Desert of Furs is ripe for exploitation. A glass furnace is built, heated by the magma – and the task of hauling sand down there for production is set. Imagine, pristine glass hives. Perhaps that's just a pipe dream, but I dream of it often. I hope that will be my artifact, whenever it happens.

Solon yells up from the forges that there aren't enough bronze bars. She's right, we are running low, but it doesn't seem to be from lack of supply – just lack of delivery. Ores are scattered around the fort, and bronze requires two of them. The supply chain is lagging. A second forge would help, but wouldn't be necessary after this time. I excavate a vein of tetrahedrite and cassiterite. Lokum again has a bad mood – he seemingly is upset about thinking abstractly in the library... I remove him from the scholar position and give him a pickaxe and send him toward the tetrahedrite. I'll find something that will please him eventually.

I walked up the central stairs to get myself a drink of dwarven wine when suddenly the outpost liaison came rolling down the stairs. Bruised, but alive, he informed me that Moldath had slammed into him and sent him down the stairs. Apparently he got caught in a sparring session. I asked Moldath to be a bit more careful. I also swung the main gate open to allow the liaison to leave.

Apparently the sparring session triggered something Mestthos. For the third time this year, a hush covered the fortress as Mestthos ran to a craftsdwarf workshop and started tinkering on some diorite.



I get a call from the pits that some of the glass products are finished. Corkscrews, tubes, and blocks. The essentials for most mechanical objects. I'm certain these will come to use eventually. I also installed a gem window in the Stinger, to ensure that enemies see our troops there and will go that way instead of kicking down the door and killing everyone in the fort proper.

Bronze equipment orders are starting to finish. Almost everyone in the military is wearing metal armor on every part – the extra pieces can go toward new recruits. I ordered an extra 6 silver hammers made, too, just in case.

Mestthos isn't the most skilled man, but he made a beautiful artifact as a tribute to Smallhands. The Snarling Famine, perhaps reference to the harshest time of the fortress from 153 to 154. It's a simple object, but a special one nonetheless. It is placed in the Library Museum.



The season passed surprisingly quickly, and now it is time to choose the next overseer. I'm honored to have done my service to Smallhands. And wish all the best to the next overseer. For now, I will return to the graves and wait until the hives are properly protected, then my time will come.

-=~-=-~=-

OOC:
That one actually was a bit boring of a season. I'm shocked we haven't had any sieges in a while. Perhaps it's time to send a squad out to harass the goblins or the necromancers?
Also... I think about half the population has the fever now. That was mostly from reclaiming objects, but also an entire wave started with it... Sorry.
Things are in a pretty good position. Steel is looking impossible without the melting exploit. It might not be totally necessary, as we have a cheat hallway for killing anything except titans/megabeasts.

Speaking of which - are there any thoughts on increasing the population cap? I messed with a tiny fort on my own games and 50 is where things tend to pop off now - that's mayor, barony, captain of the guard, and holdings. Megabeasts are pretty far up there, but I think can also be reached economically. Then again, we do have the Forgotten beasts to deal with - and that's no joke...

Salmeuk, you're up!

[Salmeuk]

I wonder how door made from a bones of a single goose looks like.

Maybe it was a really big goose? And you can't forget the horse and camel bones mixed in.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

WOW now that is an entrance to some kind of lair alright! I never would have thought to stretch the skin over the bone like that . . perhaps that is why I'm not in the business of taxidermy.

Alright, I'll get started tonight. And maybe people can d/l the save and see what FPS they are getting before we up the popcap? I'll check myself.

I am mentally prepared for chaos and labyrinths.

[delphonso]

Good call. I got some dips in FPS when large groups went through the caverns and got immolated by Bugui. Otherwise, even my terrible laptop was stable. Sieges might tank it though.

[mko]

I think that I will be OK with 50. Is raiding military included in the cap or would it allow to overfill/possibly block return?

@missions - there are some bugs, including unfixable crashes so please, make a backup before sending mission (it allows would allow us to attach new saves to bug reports).

[Salmeuk]

Wow, just wow.. the surface is an atrocity to dwarfkind.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The caverns aren't much better.

I found 'Del', buried in an unassuming coffin in the corner of the beautifully designed crypt.



I also noticed the hallway full of zombies was kind of unsecure? With only a locked door between the heart of the fortress and 20 undead, half of them named, a tantruming dwarf or an invading titan could smash open the room and unleash a rather nasty surprise.



All in all, the fortress hasn't changed much since my turn. The new bedrooms are significant, as is all the labyrinthine trap corridors, but a large number of common-use rooms are still functional, much to my surprise and happiness. Sometimes the return to a fortress can be confusing and painful when things are kind of like they were before, but not entirely, and you kind of get this deja vu effect.. maybe just me.

I'm not sure if I'll write in character or do more overview, but I will have a proper season done in the next day, and I am so looking forward to what occurs next.

[Salmeuk]

Unlike many right now, I am still working fulltime (luckily WFH, but still) so I'll take another day, do a mega-post. How I wish I had all this time to play .. but then I'd have no money, and the nobles would sentence me to a hammering!

[auzewasright]

Unlike many right now, I am still working fulltime (luckily WFH, but still) so I'll take another day, do a mega-post. How I wish I had all this time to play .. but then I'd have no money, and the nobles would sentence me to a hammering!

I’ll do a second turn, but I have schoolwork tomorrow, and I’m getting my wisdom teeth removed Monday. So, um, take your time.

[delphonso]

Yeah, I'm getting swamped with obligations these days, so take your time. I'll read whenever there's an update.

Good point about the stairs. We do have an artifact door - which could avoid destruction in one place, but not cover berserk dwarves...

[mko]

I also want to explicitly sign up for the second turn.

[Salmeuk]

The Beginning of Year 8

For many years I have lived in Smallhands, and I have never seen it such a state. Such a prosperous state, that is! Well, maybe if I dug deep into my memory, I could recall an earlier time, before the necromancer, back when I still had a wife and things were simple. . . truthfully I don't think back on the past much anymore. And I will NEVER talk about the year I spent alone and in hell.

These days there are many new faces, newcomers who braved the field of corpses and crawling skeletons. And echidnas, oh my. . This reminds me, didn't we have a captured echidna lying around? I asked the clerk, she said it was on the 74th flight of stairs and to take a left.

I stooped low to enter the echidna's chamber, but as I did so I smacked my head on the low ceiling, and with a disgusting crackling and clinking the imprisoned skeletons turned towards me. They saw my flesh and imagined the red blood underneath, and gnawed and scratched at the bars. They would be drooling if they still had mouths.



I got close to the echidna, crouching down almost to where I could reach out and touch it. This particular specimen was responsible for the killing of at least one of our citizens, probably more, but we hadn't seen fit to give it a title. How odd is our Dwarven tradition of honoring our worst enemies with the lengthiest of names.

 As I got close the echidna became furious, and curled up into a ball, however without any spines or skin it looked more like an abstract art piece than undead animal. I poked at it with a stick, and it grabbed the wood and bit the piece in two. Lucky for us, it didn't think to do the same with the wood that it was caged in!

Enough science for the day. I returned topside and met with Phonso in the dining hall, to continue the lengthy process of transferring control. That's right, I was chosen overseer a second time! AND I AGREED! What a fool, I think, but in truth I feel responsible for Smallhands. The dwarves of Smallhands less so, but for the fortress itself I have sacrificed too much to see it crumble yet again.

Of particular importance was 'The Goo Hive,' a curiously-titled death maze that, on my part, required multiple days of sleepless studying just to understand what each lever does. I'll tell you right now, most levers go SMASH. Once I got  the idea, it became clear this 'death hive' was a brilliant device that would stem the flow of most anything that chose to invade, and I would have called it foolproof, but that's just asking for it from the Gods, and I don't provoke them anymore. Not after what happened last time.

We finished discussions for the day, and I returned to my room, head full of thoughts and plans. While we had recovered from the worst of the invasions, our manufacturing was still lackluster. Our common rooms could use improvement, and there was that issue with the room full of undead sealed away in the center of our fortress. We kind of don't talk about it much, but I think it's on everyone's minds. Especially when they start clawing at the walls during a dinner party. . .

Phonso left me with a ton of good ideas for improving the fortress, and even mentioned that we had received the Queen's word to open our gates to migrants, until we were 50 strong. Good news indeed! Our hands may be small, but they are many!

I soon fell asleep, dwelling on these issues and all that was yet to come.

====

:] Yay! It's the weekend! Expect another post soon.

[delphonso]

Nice one, looking forward to what you do. Best of luck. There are several issues to fix...

[Salmeuk]

The Journal of Salmeuk, Spring of Year 8

I want a proper entrance hall, and our old one would do just fine, except it's full of contructed walls and undead minions. So, let's set up a few traps.



Good. Now that that's complete, lets open the door and see what happens.



It worked perfectly! How unexciting. Well, whatever the case, now we've got some work to do to clear this place out.



Now the smiths are pestering me about a lack of metal.



I tell them "Just make more, I mean, that's your job, right?"

"How are we supposed to forge anything when we have to walk to the bottom of the earth just to use our smelters?"

Fair point. Well, we'll have to solve this later, since now I've decided to do a little spring cleaning up top.



With our two squads, the Rainbow Raptors and the Gravewardens, providing security, I have ordered our idle citizens to remove all the stray objects from the surface. Bodies, bolts, bones and all. We have quite a collection going, but don't be alarmed, this storage is only temporary:



During this work two Swan Women have flown down from the clouds. They make happy swan noises as we work, no doubt overjoyed someone is returning the landscape to a reasonable state after all these years.



Some are not so happy - Auze seems mortified at all the gore. I'm sure he'll pull through, toughen up a bit you know. We need more dwarves that can handle a little death now and then.



Nogood just bestowed a name upon his wooden shield. I'm ok with whatever that soldier does - there is no greater badass in our military!




Then, INVADERS!



About ten or twelve soldiers appear on the horizon. A mix of humans and elves, and two undead ghouls seem to lead the pack.

I pull together the wisest dwarves in the fortress and ask them, "What do we do? There aren't that many, we could give our troops a chance to fight and earn their pay. Or we could sit behind our doors and smash them to bits with Delphonso's Goo Hive (death maze). What's the call, people?"

=========================================

All my dwarf has done for two months is ponder tumbler locks, the madlad.



Alright, what's the vote? I'll check in tomorrow for opinions. And no savescumming if we fight!

[mko]

I vote to cheat and use the trap corridor. Behold the power of pulleys!