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Author Topic: [Completed] [SinglePlayer] The Doomed World of Sil Kodor 125-184  (Read 24503 times)

StrikaAmaru

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[Completed] [SinglePlayer] The Doomed World of Sil Kodor 125-184
« on: December 07, 2020, 02:58:45 am »

Meanwhile, in the NumberCurse thread

Would releasing demons have an effect on other sites?

I was wondering that too; couldn't find any data about it.
...
Now I want to doom some poor embark just to see what happens in the next one.

Experiment Conclusions:

A. For the fort where Hell was breached:
    A1. Released demons DO NOT, of their own free will, leave the site they were released into. They are handled in the same way that (semi)megabeasts are handled when they tear apart a fort: they stay as residents, and won't become hostile until someone of the reclaiming party physically walks into them.
This was verified by reclaiming multiple demon-infested fortresses; ClanWorks for one, but also DoomHollow.
    A2. If the fort where Hell was breached is explored/raided from a second fort, the demons don't interact with the raiding parties. Four separate expeditions have gone from HopeWork to ClanWork, and neither has met any demons.
    A3: If the world where Hell was breached is played in adventure mode, the demons WILL leave the fort and start traveling the world as bandits/incidents. My batch of five demons from ClanWorks haven't done anything worthwhile; one unfortunate adventurer found a demon in a playthrough which didn't enter 'real' history, but the canon playthrough has them all doing nothing until 180.
    A4. In 55 years of fortress mode, split at the 20-year mark by adventuring, no demons have traveled to HopeWork. It might be impossible -- fortresses are only attacked by enemy civilizations, not by bandits and other unaligned factions.

B. For other fortresses in the same world:
    B1. Opening up the underworld causes the game to treat it like a cavern, meaning Forgotten Beasts can spawn in it, even if the Underworld itself was never revealed in the second fort.
HopeWork got 5 in 20 years; then the Age has changed because no Forgotten Beasts exist anymore.
    B2. These Beasts are quickly killed by demons, which makes said demons into historical figures; they can then be found in Legends.
    B3. If the second fort is retired and reclaimed, the named demons will be teleported all over the fort (again, like Forgotten Beasts).
See Part 24,  Aaaah, back home... wait, WHAT? for what happened in HopeWork's reclaim.

DFFD links:
 - Sil Kodor, year 125 after releasing the demons, but before embarking for real.
 - Sil Kodor, year 145. Or more accurately, on 144-10-14, right before retiring the fort. After this date, HopeWork has settled in the rhythm of day-to-day life, away from my meticulous concern.
 - Sil Kodor, 180-09-21, after retiring HopeWork and before starting adventure mode
 - Sil Kodor, 180-12-03 in adventure mode.
 - Sil Kodor 180-12-14, after adventurer retired and before reclaiming ClanWorks.


Table of contents:
Hope Work (125-144)
(Page 1)
1. World Intro; where I go digging through Legends.
2. Phase 1: Reclaiming the Ruins (for the purpose of ruining them even worse).
3. Phase 2: ZanosDucim: Welcome to HopeWork… (embark and year 1).
4. Story Interlude: In which Tholtig gets bad news.
5. Year 2 / 126 Enter the Tower (briefly)
6. Year 3 / 127 Enter the Tower (seriously)
7. Year 4 / 128 In which several things are started, but none are finished.
8. Years 5, 6 & 7 (129, 130 & 131) Enter the Dwarves (to the dismay of tower and goblins alike)
(Page 2)
9. Interlude: The Two Necros. A short overview of the Tower's masters and their unfortunate creations.
10. Year 8 (132) Mostly military matters -- an overview of goblins and the fort's first raids.
11. Years 9 & 10 (133 & 134). In which I fruitlessly try to fix the military, only to succeed at the end.
12. Year 11 (135) Revenge of the Dwarf! In which goblins learn that yes, dwarves can attack them right back.
(Page 3)
13. Years 12 & 13 (136 &137) Second verse, same as the first.
14. Years 14 & 15 (138 & 139) Rich Military History.
15. Interlude: Cutting Room Floor, 139-140: A look at BadDabbled, the artifact pickaxe, the death of Morul, and the three demons with their vaults.
16. Years 140-142. HopeWork has reached that amazing spot where the greatest danger of goblin invasions is that dwarves will spend too much time hauling.
17. Year 143. The one with the bugged strange mood.
18. Year 144. Wrapping up HopeWork.
Adventure Mode, 144-145
19. Legends Interlude (and thinly-disguised trip planning for the adventurers).
20. Adventure Apocrypha. Where I make a temporary save, and do my best to learn the controls. Hilarity, n00bish-ness, and stupid deaths ensue; but I repeat myself.
(Page 4)
21. Adventure Time! (Part 1) Three adventurers, who visited just about anything worthwhile on the left half of the map.
22. Adventure Time! (Part 2) Where 2 more adventurers go from AdmireFortresses, through JoyousGloomy, SwallowedShoots, near Hopework & ClanWork, and then to OpenBook.
23. Adventure Time! (Part 3). The right side of the map, from the Southern castle to the Northern tower. And hey, we can finally enter HopeWork!

HopeWork Reloaded
24. Aaaah, back home... wait, WHAT?
(Page 5). We are (not) at peace with goblins.
25. Year 5: wherein military operations begin. One goblin civ is severely diminished, one is outright annihilated, and we just pissed off the third.
26. Years 6-20 (151-170): Chipping away at dark forces. This is taking a lot longer than I expected.
27. Years 21-30 (171-180): Wherein the goblins are being ground down to almost nothing, mostly due to their own actions.

Adventuring for Slabs Demons don't banish themselves, you know.
28. Adventuring in 180, Part 1: The warm-up and exploration bits (demon banishment pending).
29. Adventuring in 180, part 2: Yeah, about that banishment...
30. Adventuring in 180, part 3: It's Nice to Have a Competent Companion, OR 16th of Opal 180; a good day for the living, a bad day for undead.
(Page 6)
31. Adventuring in 180, part 4: New Blood
32. Adventuring in 180, part 5: Spoilers
33. Adventuring in 180, part 6: Closing time

Reclaiming ClanWork (180-184)
34. Reclaiming ClanWork, post-adventurer version. I'm just here to plug the hell-hole...
35. ClanWork 181-184: The End?
« Last Edit: May 16, 2023, 05:01:03 am by StrikaAmaru »
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StrikaAmaru

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2020, 04:07:59 am »

The world of Sil Kodor (the Planes of Dawn) was generated as a pocket world with a short history and an interesting environment.


By the time our story begins, in the year 125, the goblins rule the world; the population consists of 11,064 goblins, 659 humans, and 392 dwarves. Yes, the elves already bit it. Oh, and there are some kobolds strewn about, I suppose, but who cares about them.


Most goblins are assembled in three locations, all three conveniently out of tower range. Cowards.
 

Ah yes, we also have a tower. Almost the entire landmass is reachable by, and in conflict with, the necromancer tower of SoothedPaints; it’s occupied by ten necros, and their creations. The in-game Civilization screen marks it as having ~200 inhabitants, and Legends gives a more detailed breakdown:


Dwarves, by contrast, have three rump states. Well, two really: the poor Inks of Morality have only two members, and are a dump by any standards: an old dark pit, inhabited by those two guys, and 19 goblins.


They are, nonetheless, a dwarven civilization, and the civ I’m playing is allied with them. Their past seems a bit more glorious, they used to own the ruined fortress of OpenBook until 72, when it was taken over by The Amazing Pages, aka, the necro-tower.

OpenBook:


The second civilization is The Strapping Hame; they are all concentrated in a single fortress, named AdmireFortresses; if I knew this before embarking I would have picked them instead:


They also used to own this thing, before losing it to, you guessed, the tower:


Lastly, the civilization I am currently playing: The Fountain of Quickness:


They used to be nomads, until settling in an old human tomb in 123; that is their only holding, and the whole of their civilization:



(Ignore the 'holding' off to the north; that's OpenPages, and nothing lives there that isn't horrifying).

They used to also hold the now-ruined fort of ClanWork, until the very same Amazing Pages conquered it in 95. Then a forgotten beast named Uxu SnotsWasted wrecked it, last year in fact.


So begins the year of 125; the year when I go mess up everything.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2020, 07:50:58 am by StrikaAmaru »
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StrikaAmaru

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2020, 07:29:38 am »

Phase 1: Reclaiming the Ruins*

*for the purpose of ruining them even worse.

The events described here were the first to happen, in real-life chronology. The world exploration which constituted the previous post didn’t happen until two weeks later, when I decided to turn Sil Kodor into its own thread. So anyway.

To release demons in the world, the most straightforward way to go about it is to reclaim an existing ruin, go to the bottom, and dig around for adamantine. The world already has two ruins, OpenBook and ClanWork. I picked OpenBook entirely because of the name, and without any idea that it’s technically still held by the tower. Dun dun dunnnn…

My first hint of unusual happenings was in the "strike the earth" message - it listed "soldiers of Eman" instead of something more reasonable, such as wolves, lions, or bears.


My second hint was when the seven designated sacrifices miners have arrived, and some other individuals were already loitering in the outdoor tavern; no big deal, eh? Except they weren't any normal sapients; their ‘species’ was listed as "the sacred safety", they're marked as hostiles, and have necromantic powers despite not being listed as necromancers...

“The Sacred Safety” is, from what I can tell, a religious title held by leaders of The Order of Fortifications, a dwarven religious group worshipping Urdim, dwarven god of fortresses. They started among the Inks of Morality - that dwarven civ which now only has two members. The order itself was first formed in OpenBook itself, in year 17, and is persecuted by a human civilization.

Back in the fort, we are suddenly interrupted by a sudden human corpse! Very suddenly! Ok, let's enlist everybody and kill it. And let's ignore that the corpse was on the surface, where there definitely wasn't any corpse before. And let's also ignore the hostile Sacred Safety; the game acts weird on reclaims. And there's no need investing in an embark that'll soon go down in flames anyway.

The lone Sacred Safety is soon joined by four or five more of its buddies. At the time though, I didn't pay them any mind; just a cursory thought of "you poor doomed fools". Legends revealed that eight new Sacred Safeties have been appointed/created/annointed in the spring of 125 in OpenBook; all were annointed as soon as they set foot on the map. Bafflingly, this includes one of the reclaiming dwarves; there was no sign of it in-game, and it certainly didn’t stop the undead from killing her.

Soon, there are two new zombies, one of which is a plague ghoul, opposed to all life. A dwarf dies, and matters swiftly deteriorate from here. The fledgling militia is called again, but it's too late - the priests and undead outnumber and overpower the living, and OpenBook falls again on the 22nd of Granite, though not in the way I intended.

In legends, OpenBook looks frankly weird. Most of the humans and dwarves ‘residing’ there are undead; I have no idea who’s a ‘soldier of Eman’, or who is supposed to be the Fist.


-------------------

The second embark, which actually achieved the terrible goal set for this poor world, was in ClanWork; presumably, the forgotten beast is less trouble than priests. This embark is supposedly plagued by more decent beasts, namely cougars.

We're met at the entrance of the ruins by a dwarven king who’s marked as hostile by the game; with the disaster of OpenBooks fresh in mind, the militia assembles and puts him down with no difficulty. Later, he was located in Legends, and I’m surprised to find him listed as a king of our own civilization. I now slightly regret his death, because he was a legendary six times over, four of them as a doctor.


On the flip side, he was also a… well-traveled individual, having been part of just about every civilization you can find. And no, he’s not a vampire; just a highly mercenary doctor, who found himself in ClanWork at the same time as the reclaim party, and presumably went: “I am now the king. Oh, you don’t agree? Treason! Arrest him! Wait, put down those picks…”


Anyway; with that out of the way, the exploration of the ruin begins; the bottom of the world is found soon enough, and a quick peek via DFHack locates a nearby hollow spire; the embark held a staggering six miners, so it takes less than a month to open the metaphorical gates of Hell:






The resident forgotten beast was ferreted out of the old housing complex where it loitered, and unceremoniously killed:


At the end of spring, on the 8th of Felsite, the fort of ClanWork falls again.

The save as it is now. https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=15334 Investigations in Legends Viewer were done on this save (and I never retained older versions of the fort, on the grounds that if I need to go back to an un-demonized version I can just create a new world).

Speaking of the underworld: can anyone make sense of this? Why are some map tiles not covered by the underworld?




The new embark was decided just north of ClanWork. These six tiles encompass three different biomes, they have iron, silver, and copper, but no coal; other than that, it’s a fairly unremarkable embark, that will begin (again) in some six hours.


There was a previous attempt that I started two weeks ago, and played a bit over the week-end. But I screwed it up - I forgot to bring an axe, of all things, and I could really use another mason too. Plus, I also neglected to name both the fortress and the party, which left me with the dull nonsensical names that usually come from auto-generation.

So here we go again; I was tempted to go with dwarves from AdmireFortresses, but I think I’ll stick with the former nomads (even if they’re all sorts of talentless hacks). It’s a story that appeals to me: thriving for a while, then uprooted from their own fort by the unholy forces of necromancers. They’ve wandered the world for decades, then finally settled in the abandoned and unguarded tomb of a human. From these gloomy headquarters, they try to reclaim their old fortress, and make a new beginning in their corner of the world.

At least half of that has already failed…
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King Zultan

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #3 on: December 07, 2020, 09:07:58 am »

PTW
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #4 on: December 07, 2020, 04:48:14 pm »

Strika, you continue to impress me with these deep dives into the game. First Numbercurse, now this.. keep it up. This history is juicy.

That first embark sounded like absolute fun, too bad you couldn't keep a hold on it!

Undead are the most interesting thing about the current versions of DF, and hopefully a taste of what's to come in Myth n Magic
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2020, 06:17:02 pm »

An interesting question. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out!

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StrikaAmaru

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #6 on: December 13, 2020, 10:33:13 am »

Phase 2: ZanosDucim: Welcome to HopeWork…

Hope you brought your own hope. And that you like work. Because there’s a lot of work to go around, and almost no hope.

For this embark, some tweaking of d_init is in order. A maximum of 150 citizens can inhabit this fortress; careful observers may note this is 8 dwarves more than exist in the entire civilization. This was done for two reasons: combat, and repopulation.

As you can imagine, military operations are going to be one of our primary goals in this young and hopeful fort; not because we want it to, but because the infinitely-damned tower will definitely pick a fight with us. Probably the goblins, too; at embark, we were at peace with the bigger goblin civilization (I will, once again, blame the tower). But even the most urbane goblins are allies of convenience at best; the values held by dwarves and goblins are just too different.

I also hope this higher-than-civ popcap will result in some dwarven babies being born. You know just as well as I do that the days of dwarven hyper-fertility have ended in 2014, and now even married couples won’t have children.

The embark profile was based on the previous one, which in turn was based on the venerable standard created by Capt’n Duck. This also explains why there is no axe in it - it held a training axe, which worked well enough once upon a time, but which isn’t worth the log it’s carved from nowadays.

I embarked with three picks, one copper axe, cats, sheep, and chicken, 5 gypsum bags, and 33 chunks of bituminous coal. It’s good to know ahead of time that your map has no coal.

Since I'm embarking again, I decided to further exploit pre-existing knowledge: I embarked one tile to the left, thus exchanging two tiles of mountain for two tiles of steppe. The former don’t have any iron, and the latter have trees. We still preserved the ‘three biome intersection’ aspect that persuaded me to pick this place in the first place.


To the north and east are mountains (The Dominant Tooth, stretching across two mountainous biomes), and to the west and south is a temperate shrubland named The Steppes of Lauding. I don’t know enough geography to say if a steppe is also a temperate shrubland, but I’ll presume that it is, from now on.


So it comes to pass that, in the spring of 125, seven dwarves calling themselves Momuz Inush, The Crypts of Righteousness, have established ZanosDucim. And even from before day one, they travel with bad news: the soldiers of Eman are out to get them.


Year 1 (125)

They arrive on the 22nd of Felsite, on a completely flat plane. The elevation map is a liar who lies; it states the brook is surrounded by cliffs, and it absolutely isn’t. The promise:


The reality:


With summer nearly upon us and the eternal threat of undead horrors dropping by to eat us, we strike the earth!

A 3x3 stairway gets dropped all the way to the bottom of the world. One corner of it is set to maximum priority, thus occupying one miner until it’s done. The other two will be digging the farming area, and a room to haul in wagon contents and some wood. In due time, this room will become an underground pasture.

In the steppe, the soil runs deep: two layers, the topmost of which will be left undisturbed as much as possible. All digging is planned for the second layer. We run into a vein of hematite, in the corner of the mountain biome; there’s a reason I like mountain biomes…

The bottom of the world is found all the way at level -22. We’ve passed some marble, between 89 and 83; besides the obvious use in making steel, the resulting quarry is where all temples, rooms, guilds and so on are going to be made.

Under the farm, a few rooms are hanging off the stairwell: plant and food processing, a nook for the egg layers, and a stone crafting area lower down in some granite layer, which may or may not be temporary. We excavate a great deal of gabbro in the process, most of which will be converted into stone crafts. As a side-note: gabbro is a magma-safe stone and I like all my mechanisms out of magma-safe stone, so they’ll also be coveted by the mechanic. When and if we get one, because, as previously stated, the dwarves of the Fountain of Quickness are talentless hacks.

On the surface, cats are proving their worth a thousand times over - once for every vermin! Most are creepy crawlers, with a few rats thrown in. I end up disabling the surface refuse stockpile because it occupied too many dwarves. This requires me to make a new food stockpile, because the old one is wallpapered in dead vermin.



In autumn we meet the caravan on the surface, and trade with gabbro crafts; pickings are slim, they only brought two wagons.

From the caravan we ask for lignite and bituminous coal. Coal and coke remain the main industrial bottleneck on this map; we have no coal ‘ore’ and trees are still going to be scarce, even if I’m exploiting the caverns. We already have more iron and marble than we have coal, and the invasions haven’t even started. At four chunks of lignite & bituminous coal, the caravan is expected to be the source of 56 bars of coal a year (lignite can be refined in 5 bars of coal, and bituminous coal into 9).

In addition to this greatly-needed resource, we ask for leather, wood, ores we haven’t seen (gold, platinum, and bismuthinite) and a bunch of assorted colorful stones - kimberlite, petrified wood, kaolinite, bauxite, realgar, olivine, the like. We already have cobaltite and garnierite, so if any artistic mood hits me I’m close enough to having all 16 colors of the 4-bit rainbow.

Winter catches us with 16 dwarves; these will be responsible for shaping the fort until the next year brings the large wave of migrants (or that’s the hope, at least; we may get a large wave of intelligent undead, instead). They’ll have plenty to do, between the crafting area near the surface, the habitation area in the marble layers between 89 and 83, and the smithy at the bottom of the world in -18.

Next in Sil Kodor: the much-rumoured Soldiers of Eman finally make their appearance; we ignore them utterly.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2020, 01:33:39 pm by StrikaAmaru »
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StrikaAmaru

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #7 on: December 14, 2020, 04:57:55 am »

21st Slate, 125.

The human tomb of ButtonAmazed was sufficiently close to the pole that late spring looked an awful lot like winter. ‘If it weren’t for the necromancers’, thought Milo GearedUrn, ‘we’d never have settled in this cold. And we’d have never let the dwarves settle in this tomb either, so maybe there’s a silver lining to the dark foul cloud of resurrecting mist’.

It was near sundown when Milo arrived in the house of Tholtig LetterFlight. This in itself was not unusual; the human and the dwarf had been friends for decades, after all. More careful observers might have noticed that Milo was acting particularly furtive, but this too could be dismissed: the man was a caravan guard, bad news tended to reach him first.

Milo knocked, and was let in with little fanfare. Tholtig was home, since he was a farmer by trade and there was no planting to be done for at least two more weeks. The aging dwarf brought out the inevitable drinks, then looked closer at his friend’s face.

“Ill tidings, I gather”?

“They are”. He seems to want to say more, but falters. Tholtig noticed, and handled it in the dwarven way: he pushed a goblet of strawberry wine in his friend’s hand.

“Come on, cough it up”, said Tholtig with a flourish of his hand. ”I imagine it won't get better if you wait longer”.

Milo nods. “I have two pieces of bad news for you. Your people, that is. Firstly, that your new king has been killed, and by fellow dwarves. The Strapping Hame attempted to reclaim ClanWorks, or that’s what one of those dwarves has said. They encountered him at the entrance; they attacked and slew him without any attempt at parlay or investigation”. He looks pensive for a moment. “You know, I don’t think they even knew he’s king”.

Tholtig leans back in his chair, speechless. The new hope of dwarvenkind, dashed as it has risen. Without words, he poured half his cup on the floor; libation, a human custom to honor the dead. The dwarves had picked it up during their ever-tightening alliance with the Confederations of Swimming.

Milo did the same, and added: “He was a legendary doctor, and a spectacular man; his passing diminished Sil Kodor entire”.

A sullen silence stretched between the two. Milo broke it, as the truly bad news had not yet been broached.

“They released demons. In ClanWorks, that is. I saw three fiends as I was leaving, they were hunting two of the so-called reclaiming party; that’s likely why I still live. They died for it, but they still released demons”.

Before, Tholtig found himself speechless. Now, he was fuming.

“Damn goblin. Literally damned, if he planned for it. And he sent dwarves, you say? On purpose, no doubt”. Tholtig trails off into incoherent profanity. Milo merely waits.

Eventually, Tholtig regains control of his own emotions. He rises from the chair, a decision clearly made.

“I, Tholtig LetterFlight, hereby swear vengeance on the goblin king of dwarves Atir TombFences, and The Strapping Hame in general. For the callous murder of our king, for the defiling of our former home, for the endangerment of Sil Kodor itself. They will pay. I will make them pay, or I will die trying. This I swear”.

Milo nods in solemn acceptance. Some subtle instinct assured him this was the beginning of a momentous chain of events; if not for himself, then for his friend.

Tholtig sits back down, and begins plotting; there really isn’t any other word, for the dwarf leaning on his table with a vacant stare and speaking in sentences that sometimes trail off into nothing.

“We have wagons, we prepared them for the caravan. For leaving, there are no issues, we’ve been nomads long enough that we remember how to do a swift bugout. We can bring some supplies, and Ustuth has nothing left to dig here… Tholtig WallScale, too. Bim’s a mason, and she knows bookkeeping, and trading, but not well enough to join a caravan… she’ll be a good backup… Where, dunno where… ClanWorks is a danger”. He briefly falls silent, and beats a rhythm on the table with his fingers.

“North”, he says eventually. “North of ClanWorks, we have mountains and woods. Always a good combination for us. No coal, but we can burn and buy”. He turns back to Milo. “Yes. I think we’ll start a new fortress. I have three I want to persuade, and I’ll see who else wants to come. If we can grab some former caravan guards, that would help a lot. I don’t think we can, though, we have very few dwarves who can still fight”.

“Why not us? I’d go for sure, and I think I can find some more who’d want to join. Maybe even ask Xetan for a guard”? He asked, referring to the dwarf who’d been law giver to the Confederation since 121.

But Tholtig shook his head. “Dwarf or not, she can’t and won’t put us ahead of you. If she betrays her duty, she’s not a dwarf. Or a law giver, come to think of it. We either manage on our own, or we don’t”. A wry smile makes its way through his moustache. “Though if she’ll point the caravan between DawnSeared and KnightThorns a bit north in our direction, that would be great. Oh, that will work out nice, we’re practically in the middle”.

Then he remembered the first half of Milo’s sentence. “Oh yes, and humans in the first year of a fort won’t cut it, no offense. I’ve read through diaries from the founding of ClanWorks, and even one from AdmireFortresses; the first year is a nightmare of ceaseless work, most of it underground, the surface isn’t safe, and it’s honestly not an environment where your people thrive. Wait till we have a tavern and inn, alright? Then I’ll be delighted to see you visit, unless of course I died”.

“You never made good jokes”, said Milo.

“I wasn’t joking”, retorted Tholtig. “I may well die in this mess. We’re in the territory patrolled by the broken ones, too; I might not even get there, might get killed on the way, or taken alive to some necromancer outpost”. He didn’t say what would happen afterwards; there was no need.

-----------

I took another look at Legends. Yes, the other dwarven civ has a goblin for a king; I’m glad I didn’t pick them, now. And the human civilization in whose tomb we’re loitering has a dwarf for a law giver - that law giver is another legendary doctor, former member of our civ, and lover of the short-lived king of dwarves Anthil GrandLock, who got killed in ClanWorks. Ooops!

And yes, the dwarf Anthil GrandLock really was king of The Fountain of Quickness. He didn’t just coast on his girlfriend’s title, though he might have gained his own kingship with some help from her.

The reason he was marked as hostile was that the embarking party wasn’t from the civ I’m playing now. They were The Scarlet Works, of The Strapping Hame (aka, the other dwarves). A civilization which, since the year 87, has been led by Atir TombFences, goblin king of dwarves. The puzzling thing is that in the in-game civilizations screen, the Strapping Hame is allied with the Fountain of Quickness. Apparently, we’re allied or at peace with everybody except the tower.

This also gives me the chance to alter the roleplay: I’m going to pretend the seven ‘reclaimers’ were demon cultists who broke into hell on purpose. I’m also going to conquer those dwarves, despite being in alliance with them, thus getting to own AdmireFortresses anyway. It’s fantastic how well events line up sometimes!

ButtonAmazed, the human tomb where The Fountain of Quickness is loitering since 123, is still owned by the humans, somehow. That’s how I came up with the notion that humans made their tomb outside of necro range, and much later, as the tower’s forces have been creeping on their borders, allowed dwarves to live there as guards.

Milo is completely made up; Tholtig isn’t. He’s the farmer, cook, bookkeeper, and manager of the starting seven, and, spoiler, future king. The narrative is that he always was the leading candidate for kingship, but he wanted to wait until HopeWork was properly established. Also, to not piss off the grieving widow who gives orders to their best allies.
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #8 on: December 18, 2020, 10:42:20 am »

Year 2 (126)

1st of Granite. The year begins with a message I’ve never seen before:


Five invaders have popped up from the north; four are the Soldiers of Eman mentioned in the embark screen, and the leader is a HeatedDikes’s (sic) Fist. All are human variants, or at least large in size.



HeatedDikes' Fist:


Soldier of Eman:


They’re also not at all keen on invading, even if there’s an open path into the fort. They loiter on the north-east, where they spawned, until the 5th, and only then slowly amble towards the fort. I left one of the hatches unlocked, because we also have three cage traps on the bend before the hatches. If three of them get trapped, the siege will be broken, and I can have my spring migrant wave.


They finally reach the entry on the 8th, and oh crap the fuckers are trapavoid!

Only a swift press of the space bar saves the sixteen dwarves of HopeWork from meeting the fate of their kin; I lock the hatch while one of the night creatures is right under it. I also fail to screenshot it, because I just got scared in real life.

Seems like we’re waiting instead.

(A side note: for story purposes, I’m going to pretend this never happened - I might have not already known that these guys are trapavoid, but the dwarves of Sil Kodor would have definitely learned by now. So, as far as the narrative is concerned, all three hatches were locked shut as soon as the five invaders had popped up from the north, and the sixteen dwarves all prepared to wait them out.)

At some point in this excitement, the farmer from the starting seven has claimed the title of king; I suppose I should have seen that coming, what with the civ having been nomadic, and with the previous king killed in the ClanWorks reclaim.


He promptly mandates a traction bench; that might actually be worth doing, and I need to weave some rope anyway…

Summer. The undead have left, and I’m waiting for migrants. Until then, we entertain the caravan, and I find humans also carry lignite and bituminous coal. Great! They get the same stone requests as the dwarves, and I’m asking for wood too; I skip the leather, we’ll get enough from dwarves I hope. The list of pets holds only disappointment; humans don’t carry either grizzly bears, or tiercel peregrine falcons, and since elves are already extinct I can only get these critters if they pop up on the map. I’ll have to be happy just buying coal.

Also at the start of summer, the new king’s mandate expires; should remember that for later, because it’s much faster than I’m used to.

Migrants arrive, and the fort quickly bubbles up to 43. Good, we can crank out the builds for rooms and temples, and a farmer’s guild as well, because one just formed. I also want to wall up the saner portions of the first cavern, which we have exposed while digging through marble.

The first cavern was generated with some bizarre geometry: the portion under the forest biome is reasonably normal, if muddied and devoid of vegetation. But under the mountain, the cavern has become a series of deep vertical cracks that go at least 50 levels down, before getting lost into the dark.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

By autumn, this part of the first cavern was walled and the access points to the mountain cavern were floored over. There are webs scattered in here, it may be worthwhile to dig out the stone and leave the empty room as the world’s slowest web farm. It’s the only benefit we can get from it, because there’s not a single cavern tree to be seen.

Autumn is spent building various walls in the marble layer; the vast hollow quarry gets sectioned off into the new king’s rooms, a few larger civilian rooms for the married couples, and between them some leftover space is reserved for other noble’s rooms; one will definitely be a mayor, not so sure about the rest (dungeon master and captain of the guard, I guess). All rooms are currently of low quality, despite the marble floor. They’ll look better after they’re all smoothed and engraved, and some marble furniture installed.


I'm not terribly happy with the architecture, either. There are still six levels of marble above, I might move the king in his own level, and repurpose his old rooms for guilds and temples. Meanwhile, the farmer's guild was assigned to the left, and a general purpose temple in continuation. Dwarves have been complaining...

Speaking of the mayor, we received 7 more migrants, bumping the number to 52.

Two new digging projects are launched: a safe trade depot, and a smithy. The smithy goes first, on the grounds that it needs smoothing before it’s properly operational, and that it will generate a great deal of granite that can be cut up in blocks to wall up the third cavern.

Winter. A vile force of darkness has arrived! By which I mean a goblin and a human have briefly popped up from the southern border, and left the next tick. If I weren’t looking straight at them, I wouldn’t even have seen them.

The third cavern is revealed sometime in mid-winter, once most of the granite was cut into blocks. Revealing the cavern itself was simple: there already was a wet stone wall by the staircase on level -17, so it doesn’t take a genius to carve a fortification in the dry granite on level -16.

It’s a decent place, with two spires of adamantine poking through into the west, and two lakes connected to the border. I intend to wall up everything that can be walled up, and obsidianize part but not all of the lakes; especially around the bit with the adamantine.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But before we begin walling, we first reach a cornerstone of any self-respecting dwarven fort: punching into the magma pipe, and starting up the smithy.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The year ends with all dwarves busy constructing walls, and a complete lack of food and drinks. Oooops?

-----

I made a new Legends export in the summer of 126; bit impatient there, my intention was to make one after 5 years, and have a beefy set of changes to show off. And I’ve come to an unpleasant realization: the game keeps spawning dwarves out of thin air, instead of migrating them as I expected.

In 125, the civ had a total of 142 dwarves, 11 goblins and 7 humans. All of them were inhabiting the tomb of ButtonAmazed.

In 126, the same civ had 183 dwarves, 17 goblins and 7 humans. ButtonAmazed held 140 dwarves and all the non-dwarves, while HopeWork had the remaining 43.

This is good for the civilization’s prospects, but bad for roleplaying, and for the lifespan of military dwarves - if I won’t have to be thrifty with their lives, they’ll get thrown in more meatgrinders than expected.

Edit: the night creatures are not necromancers, but they are building destroyers; that poor depot was rebuilt very quickly at the start of summer. There wasn't any good spot to insert this little tidbit in the narrative, and for the sake of completeness I want to put it out there.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2020, 11:16:13 am by StrikaAmaru »
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #9 on: December 28, 2020, 02:46:32 pm »

Year 3 (127)

Spring was occupied with last year’s projects:

The smithy was polished, stocked, and put to use: there was a level 6 armorer among the migrants, but regrettably no weaponsmith; that one will need to be trained in-house. That’s perfectly fine, because we have silver coming out our nose, and a whole bunch of copper which, lacking any tin, is best spent teaching an armorsmith how to armorsmith. That’s the end of good news about raw materials, though: we have exactly five veins of hematite for iron, and very little adamantine. I won’t even touch the shiny blue stuff until the designated weaponsmiths are legendary +5.

The trade depot entry was carved and sealed, but not properly finished; I still have to smooth it, build a proper depot room, and make the stockpiles. However, it is usable, so I’ll save blinging it up for later; we have better things to do.

The third cavern was walled, and we’re getting ready to pump magma in the two lakes. Neither will be fully obsidianized, an infinite water supply is too useful to destroy. And the river doesn’t count, it freezes half the year.

Rooms are lagging behind most. There are only two married couples, and they each have a baby. For the rest, some careful estimation of ages is in order. I’ll arrange at least a few honeymoon suites, preferably between dwarves that won’t go in the military.

On a side note, over the past two years the fort had four strange moods, all of them possessions; I considered digging up the DFhack command that induces a mood, just to reduce my own frustration. This spring, we finally had a fey dwarf, so fair play gets a new shot in the arm.

Summer.


Invasion! We’re going to miss the caravan, but we can live without them. I intend to ignore them this time around too; I have obsidian to cast.

The tower sent some 50-odd foot soldiers besides the necromantical rockstars, and three more of those plague zombie things that were risen in OpenBook (they're the red zombies).


Plague zombies, by the way, live up to their name. They’re the infectious kind, and even more dangerous than werebeasts - there’s no time delay, a bite will instantly turn the target into another plague zombie. Though the target tends to keep fighting the zombie which infected it, as a wild boar demonstrates:



On a more hilarious note, the siege is excellent for security. A flock of keas had spawned, and were all killed without managing to steal anything; that was disproportionately amusing to me, but then again I hate keas.

Autumn.

Aw crap. The siege has not broken. Seems I was lucky in year 2, when they just left at the beginning of summer. Frankly, I have to approve of the change, from a gameplay perspective - why would a bunch of undead need to return to base, it’s not like they ran out of rations and need to resupply.

Still. It means that I’ll have to kill this invasion, if I want any trade, or migrants, or military operations in the rest of the world (cough, southern goblin civilization that sent the two-person siege from last winter, cough). What I’m not entirely sure is how.

I know what I won’t be doing: I won’t be fighting them with military dwarves. Going against them mano a mano (dwarfo a zombo?), cannot possibly end well for me. There isn’t yet a real military in HopeWork, and even if it were, those plague zombies make fighting hand to hand into a dubious option; it’s possible that good armor can deflect bites, but I won’t bank on it. I called them worse than were-creatures, and I stand by it.

Killing the invasion, then, will have to be done via mechanized means. Probably going to involve minecarts. I’m sure you’re all heart broken. But that’s for later, I have a cave to secure and two lakes to obsidianize.

Winter. See above sentence.

By the end of the season, the eastern lake is properly sealed; the western one still needs a bit of work. In related news, walls can't be built on top of a 1-deep puddle of magma, and that same tile tile of magma can take a whole fucking three months to evaporate; I got sufficiently bored/annoyed that I just changed the plan.

Ensemble view:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The eastern lake:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The western lake:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Meanwhile on the surface, the invasion does nothing but slaughter the wildlife and scatter spent ammo.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And, as if to amuse me once again before the year turns, they chase a langur across the map, Benny Hill style:

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #10 on: December 28, 2020, 03:37:08 pm »

ASCII, please.
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #11 on: December 29, 2020, 03:32:03 am »

ASCII, please.
ಠ_ಠ You don't get to tell me how to play my own fort, Riaktor.

If it were community, you might have a leg to stand on; if you were the original poster, and established it as part of the rules. As it is, I like Phoebus, and I'm going to use it.

Besides, I tried playing ASCII before, and got a headache in about 2 hours; too much eye strain. It doesn't work for me.
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #12 on: March 16, 2021, 03:41:37 am »

Ok, so it’s awkward writing one of these; when the roles are reversed and I’m the reader, I don’t particularly care why an author goes silent for however long before picking up again. But if you do care why, here it is:


Year 4 (128)

A wild DF update appears! It promises to revise the stress system, which may be the only hope of survival for this one dude who’s been bitching non-stop since he got here, and who already killed a miner in the days of 47.04. He’s the fort’s best mechanic too - I gave him a job that was easy to level up while trying to save him, but clearly it’s not enough. Come to think of it, he should get back on carving mechanisms; it might help him, and anyway, you can never have too many mechanisms.

It doesn’t really work; he tantrums again, and kills again - this time a random hauler. So I decide to cut my losses and expel him. But first, he’s condemned for this new murder, and for a whole slew of lesser crimes that I deferred punisment on, while hoping to improve his mood. For all these, he is soundly beaten, and then admitted to the hospital for a few weeks.

Then he’s expelled, and now he’s just loitering in the communal areas, showing no apparent desire to actually leave. At least he stopped throwing tantrums. And killing people. And mutilating cats. Honestly; the map edge is perfectly accessible, right there in the caverns. He can get out of HopeWork, and go traipsing through the deepest caves of the world; the jabberers, rutherers, cave crocodiles, and forgotten beasts just can’t wait to have fun with him!

Sigh. Back on track. The big project for this year is dealing with the undead invasion; for this purpose, a mechanical solution was decided on. I’m thinking minecarts, I never used them for offensive purposes; spike traps and normal traps can be used as a backup solution. While stone floodgates are being carved and five iron minecarts are being smithed, a water cistern is excavated on the east side of the map, right next to the river.


Below them, a reactor will follow suit. All wooden components will be made from tunnel tube, because why not? Pipes and screws are already being carved, again from tunnel tube; all nice and fuchsia (15 of each; I only need 12 for the reactor, but the remaining 3 won’t go amiss).

7th of Slate. A second forgotten beast sets foot in HopeWork, and again in the unsealed portion of the first cavern:


It was immediately murdered by the first forgotten beast within HopeWork, another one with poisonous vapors, but also with flight. That latter one was the deciding factor in why Omu got insta-gibbed on the same day it arrived - ole Malluzospu had just sat one level higher, beating the snot out of Omu, and only deigning to come on the surface after the battle was as good as decided:



Summer. The siege has lifted! It has lasted exactly one year. They left a crap ton of ammo littering the surface, one axe-zombie stuck up a tree, and a deep sense of disappointment. My dwarven engine is still under construction, and the minecart-powered zombie grinder isn’t even plotted. Oh well, time to reclaim everything on the surface, except what’s in proximity to the zombie. A new ammo stockpile is made in the original corridor, and dwarves come out to gather corpses, ammo, and junk.

The human caravan comes to trade in the new and still unfurnished underground depot; they’ve brought the stones and coal chunks I ordered two years ago, despite the gap year when I was cowering underground from a bunch of zombies the might of the tower. Predictably, I order much of the same for next year.

Autumn arrives, and a vile force of darkness with it! A living siege, this time, and again from the north-east, the same direction as the tower. The only thing they slay are my plans of exploiting the surface, though, as we immediately turtle up. They also do me a solid, as they charge for that one zombie goblin up a tree, and drive her down on the surface. She then proves that being dead is no reason to stop killing:


Her winning streak lasts until a goblin axeman named Zom comes near, and beheads her in a single strike; no combat, no faffing about - veni, vidi, chop. That is literally the only interaction in the combat logs.

I should probably enlist a full military of my own, now that the usual frantic work of setting up a fort is finally dying down. I already have the squads set up, ever since before the large migrant waves, but they’ve never been filled up. So 30 ‘lucky’ dwarves are assembled in two melee squads and a crossbow one; the melee dudes are also assigned two ‘barracks’ in whatever space I can find. As usual, the majority of them are utter n00bs, having neither military skills, nor any other kind of skills. Still, even if I did have a fully trained military, I doubt I’d send them against the 70-ish invaders that have arrived.

Making matters worse, the brook freezes in the second month, before the reservoir is sealed with bridges. Thus I’m doomed to yet another disappointing siege, where I hide instead of fight. I use this time to alleviate the clothing situation in the fort; cleanowned x orders get issued several times, and by the end of autumn everyone has new clothes.

With two weeks left in the siege, I realize I could have been making a trap corridor; not to deal with the siege per se, but to acquire prisoners. HopeWork’s burgeoning army will eventually need to kill some actual enemies to harden themselves, and the goblins are presenting themselves as significantly less deadly than the tower’s denizens; too bad I didn’t think it in time. I decide on a winding tunnel in the mountain biome, left of the depot entry; the right side is reserved for mechanized slaughter.

I've also failed to screenshot the work in progress; here's a picture from next year, when it was actually completed.


Meanwhile, I’m still hemming and hawing over the minecart grinder; the initial inspiration and model was Kruggsmash, who lived up to his name and made this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daWZD9CcW5c . But I do have some doubts about this particular model, because I intend to use it against building destroyers, and the powered components, the gears, axles, and plates, are all valid targets. I’m worried that I’ll open the corridor, the experiments will get hit once or twice, and then they’ll cheerily dismantle everything.

Winter. As expected, the siege lifted. The usual surface cleanup takes place, and the equipment for the dead goblins goes to the smelter; our first goblinite harvest.

With the brook frozen, an experiment is underway:


This used to be a hematite vein, overlapping with the path of the brook. In older versions of DF, digging through such a feature while the brook (or river, or pond) was frozen would result in ore, not ice chunks. It appears this was a bug, and it has been patched.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2021, 03:46:34 am by StrikaAmaru »
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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #13 on: March 18, 2021, 02:01:36 am »

Year 5 (129)

Spring. A new goblin siege has arrived, from the same N-E direction as the other. This one too shall pass, since the army has yet to acquire even a level by training; in fact, they don’t seem to be training at all. Some skill gain was made, from individual training, but it’s minuscule.

The cage trap corridor was completed this season too; to my great embarrassment, two of the three bridges had to be torn down and rebuilt; I seem to have a habit of forgetting to set the direction. It wasn’t the last change either; the fortifications were initially carved from natural stone; this caused me problems when body parts got stuck in them and stank up the place. I ended up digging all of them out, and reconstructing them from blocks.

Summer. Not much happened, besides trade with the humans, training for the troops, and overall fort development.

Autumn. The dwarven caravan has had a little bug - it apparently consisted only of 2 guys with draft animals, no wagons, and the caravan was forever stuck unpacking. By sheer blind luck, I found out that most of the caravan had refused to spawn on the map edge; this was revealed by a convenient save & reload (not quicksave - full save, close DF, reload the next day; I was lucky that it was late evening at the time).

As soon as the map froze, a massive logging campaign was initiated. Not only do I need the wood, but I am sick and tired of ceding the surface to invaders whenever they show up. I’m planning a massive system of walls, towers and bridges to create a safe(ish) area on the surface, and control pathing for invaders. Fliers not included, of course.

Winter. All trees in the approximate way of the wall have been chopped; with two quantum stockpiles defined (one for willow, the other for all other surface wood), the entire fort is occupied with hauling. The only exception are the two melee squads, who are tasked with improving their skills.

A strange milestone is passed this year: it marks the first season in HopeWork’s history when we had more peace than war. Discounting the first year when no invasions are possible*, and that one time when the siege lasted one tick, HopeWork has had 7 seasons of invasion and 7 of peace; this winter is the 8th season of peace.

* Well almost; there was a time in a version of 47.03 when the tower attacked me in the first winter. Full-blown siege, too, 80+ invaders for a fort of 20 dwarves.

Also, the forgotten beast Malluzospu from the first cavern died to a giant cave spider. They have killed each other, from what I can tell.

Next year: the great wall is planned.

Year 6 (130)

Spring begins with another abortive siege from the goblins; a vile force of darkness has arrived, for all of one tick. Spring then continues with an equally abortive tower siege; the enemy have come and are laying siege to the fortress, for all of one tick.

Besides that minor distraction, the plan for our new walls has been finalized:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Whatever overlaps with ponds is going to have fortifications as foundations; on the surface, the first level will be made from blocks, and at least a second level will be from fortifications. I don’t expect to finish this year, at a minimum I’m going to run out of blocks. Whenever this over-engineered monstrosity is finished, the inside should be safe from all except fliers, and what will be deliberately left in.

The large towers have an internal 7x7 square floor; this is the default size for a barracks, so I intend to move the troops in them later. I still haven’t figured out how said troops will travel into the fort, or muster outside when needed. Problems for other years.

The mountainous biome on the north-east, where all the (serious) invasions start, is left as ‘outside’ the fort, and will be watched by three barrack towers. It’s also where most of the traps will be placed,

Summer. While trading with the humans, I see a few blood splatters on the floor; they’re from a pet peafowl who wasn’t pastured. There are no combat logs involving it, so this may be a syndrome from one of the pools of ichor left by the experiments on the surface.


To check, I create a pasture on top of a two-tile pool, and assign a dog to it. The dog starts bleeding almost immediately. Other than this, there are no wounds on her, or any health conditions. She’s just splattering blood around, so far at least; I’ll wall her up and see how her condition develops in the long term. “The long term”, in this case, meant about a half the year, because an invading zombie has managed to climb into the enclosure and kill her.




Autumn. The tower’s back, and brought some new buddies: night’s hounds, nightmares of night, Anripuja’s Wolves, experiments of Vushimush, and creatures of Bunelogem (the u should have a circumflex accent, but I can’t be bothered). Several have resulted from experiments on dogs. The necromancers are taking “kick the dog” extremely literally, and also up to eleven. Million.

Besides the new faces, we’re also invaded by a ton of soldiers of Eman, HeatedDikes’ Fists, plague ghouls and normal zombies. And three living goblins, which honestly look entirely out of place…

I think I’ll dedicate a chapter to the experiments, and to the two necromancers of the world. There seems to be enough material.

Interestingly, the experiments seem to be bleeding, or at least oozing - the ground under them is smeared in ichors and extracts, despite the lack of combat so far. If any of these carry other, more dangerous syndromes, ol’ HopeWork may experience terminal amounts of FUN.


The trap corridor has finally had its inauguration. Since I knew there were some trap-avoid creatures in there, the army was called in. The two melee squads were stationed in the horizontal segment, while the crossbow dwarves were kept behind fortifications. After making double-sure the ‘safe’ civilian burrow was set correctly, and that everything was forbidden on the surface, the outer bridge was dropped. And all my precautions were for nothing because dwarves can’t be arsed to obey station orders. Five of these idiots, one at a time, have left their designated positions and walked into the teeth of an entire siege. Four of them have died. The fifth decided to return; the smartest decision in their life.

The Soldiers of Eman have entered first, and I close the outer bridge after them; they’re much faster than normal zombies or plague ghouls, and have outpaced the rest of the siege by a great deal. This allowed me to cut them off from their colleagues, and indulge in some defeat in detail.


The burgeoning army of HopeWork was sent in, and had had a surprisingly good showing. Except three Creatures of Bunem-whatever, all these have been brought down by dwarven steel and silver.


The three creatures in question, btw, are the ones by the inner microcline bridge; said bridge is 3 tiles long, and they stopped directly on it when I locked the marble door (not building destroyers, then). Naturally, I pulled the lever; two were atom-smashed out of existence and the third was propelled into the roof; it came back down dead. This is also the point where the Soldiers of Eman are shown to have a ranged attack - they spit globs of extract.

Year 6, Winter & Year 7, Spring.

The corridor is cleaned, rearmed, and reopened; the zombies and ghouls have ambled near the entrance, and when the bridge is dropped, almost the entire siege crawls underground.


The only creatures on the surface are the (non-sentient?) Hounds and Creatures, and some 20 undead that were too far away. Seeing another opportunity, I close the corridor at both ends, and send the army outside. All of them. The surface is reclaimed without any dwarven deaths.


(I want to make it clear that the siege state was still ongoing; it didn’t end until all invaders were either trapped or re-killed; another difference between tower sieges and living sieges, and one which isn’t in the wiki).

As for the zombies and ghouls caught in the corridor, they were repurposed into marksdwarf training dummies. They keep blocking bolts with their shields, so I don’t expect a whole lot of actual dead; but they’re doing a great job of leveling up the squad. I’m considering enlisting another one… while zombie supplies last.


Observe: rapidly mounting archery skillz, and 3 kills total (one of which is a crundle):


While zombie supplies lasted, I have made a new crossbow dwarf squad, a new melee squad, and reshuffled the now four melee squads to extract a dedicated axedwarf squad. HopeWork now has 50 dwarves under arms, of varying quality. The crossbow squads are, ironically, the most skilled ones; they number five legendaries now. The zombies are beginning to die, as well; primarily by the legendary dwarves, but the others are getting some kills in too. However, it’s still taking too long; so I station the army on the surface, and open the outer bridge. The siege ends in the last month of spring, when the last of the untrapped zombies are killed, 8 months (and a bit) into the projected 12-month siege.

Spoiler: the state of the siege (click to show/hide)

In total, some 60 invaders got caught in traps. They’re fairly evenly split between normal zombies, plague ghouls, and experiments. It’s still unclear what makes an experiment trap-avoid or not; in the same caste, some are waltzing over traps while others get caught. Maybe it’s a holdover from their previous identity, or maybe it’s randomized on creature generation.

It is now summer. I am waiting to see if the humans will come, or if another siege will.

Summer. The humans have come; they receive a spectacular amount of large clothes of varying quality, originating from all the dead invaders.

By the corridor, some traps are being emptied, if you know what I mean. All melee squads have been stationed nearby, then invaders were removed from cages, by way of assigning them to a nearby pasture (not pit, it’s all on the same level). As soon as they’re out of the cage, active military dwarves will immediately attack them, without any need for extra orders.

No plague ghouls have been pastured in this way; I don’t want any infected dwarves yet. I’ll doubtlessly experiment later, out of curiosity if nothing else, but for now the sanctity of the dwarven form shall be preserved.

Autumn. A large goblin siege has arrived; about 50 trolls, 60-70 mounted goblins, and their corresponding 60-70 beak dog mounts. My only casualty is FPS; it immediately craters to 12-15, and makes for a sharp change from my usual 45-50. Mounted goblins travel painfully slow; much slower than goblins on foot, or the trolls that accompany them. In any sane world, goblins wouldn’t bother with riding beak dogs, there’s really no benefit.


The trap corridor is opened, and the trolls rush in; they clog most of my traps. The rest of the siege travels as a compact mass, and slowly, very slowly, make their way underground. Even in the presence of fortifications, the goblins seem to keep formation; they keep together, and don’t want to advance outside the trap corridor and into the fortress as a whole. I shrug, and raise both bridges. I’m now into the strange position of having all my invaders locked in a narrow space underground, while the surface is perfectly safe. FPS, I should mention, did not improve at all. Crossbow dwarves are called in; the siege has some 15 ranged attackers, but fortifications favor us.

Towards the end of autumn, I get the brilliant idea to build a few cages with plague ghouls to the right of the bridge, then raise the bridge and release them; the ensuing fight results in several plague ghoul beak dogs, no infected goblins, and the extermination of the tower’s forces. I can only wonder what effects this would have on the fort’s reputation.


Winter. The siege has ended; I genuinely haven’t paid enough attention to see if it was from time, or from losses. The goblins, now noticeably fewer, are still locked in the corridor and being pelted by bolts. My FPS has gotten far worse: it’s now hovering around 6. In a bid to reclaim my FPS, I drop the outer bridge; they all shuffle out, through constant fire, and leave to the north. Two of them make it outside only to drop dead from wounds.

The rest of the year is occupied with cleaning and partying; dwarves need a new change of clothes, and in the year’s last month and a half all jobs have been removed (except food hauling, dumping, and lever pulling). Next year, jobs will be reassigned from scratch.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2021, 02:12:44 am by StrikaAmaru »
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[Sigtext. Contains links to mods, LPs and an index of all the things I wrote on this forum. Does not contain a viable sig. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=49316.msg6860463#msg6860463]

tonnot98

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Re: The Doomed World of Sil Kodor: A Demon Mobility Experiment
« Reply #14 on: March 18, 2021, 01:42:08 pm »

This is all looking pretty interesting so far, though I'll mostly be here to watch how you deal with a dying civ. I have doubts that the demons are gonna be travelling anywhere. We've had demons on the loose in The Museum for a long time, but they haven't gone anywhere. It might have to do with the site being inaccessible, though.
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Not sure if dying of old age is an honor or a shame for weaponmasters. On the one hand, it means they never got the opportunity to die in glorious battle. On the other hand, it means nothing could beat them in glorious battle.
Meow.
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