Part 3 (217 Autumn - 218 Autumn)
The smithy has been completed. Some of the bars have been moved underground, thus decluttering smelters, and allowing them to process some badly-needed copper at a faster rate.
While the peasants are hauling, miners have moved above the second cave, carving out new magma channels all across the northern map edge. This revealed the North-West corner of the map where I once feared another zombie tree. There was no such tree, in fact there have been no zombies whatsoever. Because that map corner contains this monstrosity:
It has been annihilating every creature unfortunate enough to cross its path, living or dead:
I was really worried it might cause me issues, and was also low-key hoping it would sit in the way of magma so it would either melt, or become encased in obsidian - a sure death for any creature. But it did neither; instead, it swam away, along the western edge, and stayed out of view for the rest of my turn.
(I never got the bastard’s name. ‘The Bismuth Monster’ will have to do).
And speaking of pouring obsidian: the results of half a year of digging, constructing, and pumping:
Walling up around the tree was a lot more of a pain than I expected, and took several save-scums to figure out how to deal with the stupid 15 zombies still stuck on it. The rest of the walls were a breeze, but this thing is the curse that keeps on giving.
My first idea was to station the army at its bottom, and hope the zombies will jump down on the new obsidian floor, to their deaths. Instead, they stayed up on their little perch and attacked down towards the dwarves, who were in turn attacking up. There were casualties on both sides, and it just took
so damn long… After three failed runs I ditched the idea.
My second and much better idea was to channel above the tree, let zombies walk into the fort, and use the now venerable cage trap corridor to thin the horde. Military can handle what survives the traps; three jabberers, specifically. This was a great success, with one complication: the dwarf who went to dig the channel chose to jump down among the zombies, thus ensuring he died like a moron, and that the horde was delayed while killing him.
With the tree finally clean, it’s time to start constructing. It went reasonably alright, excluding the odd zombie resurrecting or spawning on the edge. Not to say only undead spawned, we also had one gorlak, a flock of bugbats who are still flying around, and a few crundles who didn’t live very long.
Far more infuriatingly were the
five dwarven deaths, including the idiot miner. Notably, none of them were from the military, all were civilians, and a disproportionate 4 of them were miners. For some reason, miners just love to rush towards danger, despite being practically popcorn when it comes to surviving damage. For crying out loud, you’re civilians, act like it!
Before operations were shut down, the lower level was fully sealed, while the upper level had floors built and was half-sealed. We ran into some slight issues with the tree itself, and the estimated 180-200 items blocking 5 tiles of the edge.
I decided this problem is best solved with magma.
One unexpected benefit is that the tree itself seems to whittle down from having magma poured directly on top of it; considering the stupid thing can’t be cut, that’s good news.
Anyway, while the tree and the garbage around it were burning, all but 8 dwarves were enlisted in the military. The exceptions were five miners, one woodcutter, one child and one very unhappy dwarf who will be kept away from any dangerous implements.
They were allowed to pick up armor while the magma evaporated. Then walling operations have begun again, this time with far less of a hassle. There still were two deaths, in the tiny exit off to the right of the main operation: a miner (of course) went and picked a fight with an undead giant cave toad who’d climbed on the obsidian from the surrounding lake. Equally of course, he got swiftly murdered.
Then a stupid draftee somehow ended up in the lake, and drowned long before the remaining 4 miners have even started to dig a ramp so he can climb out. This wasn’t the result of any combat by the way; the scene was peaceful, the dead miner had been re-killed weeks ago, and all the edge sealing up was very nearly done. He was left in the lake where he fell, and the island of obsidian was walled up away from the rest of the fort. He can be undead all he wants, as long as it doesn’t bother anyone.
On the other end of the northern edge, an undead giant olm keeps things complicated:
It’s close enough to keep dwarves from building a floor, but not so close as to aggro on dwarves and come over to this side, where hammerdwarves can kill it. With only one month left until autumn, the whole area was left as it is.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the fort:
The caged eerie mist zombie was atom-smashed; this produced a specific death message:
The little airlocks have proven their value: two separate FBs have spawned in the first cave, while I was fiddling with walls, floors, and zombies in the second cave:
They promptly got in a fight, which Sarek won quickly, although it got seriously banged up in turn:
Other than those two horrors, the first cavern airlock has produced nothing in its entire existence.
AvolitionBrit’s dwarf had a strange mood, and crafted a crown. If he weren’t a named dwarf (the only named dwarf still surviving in this shithole, actually), nobody would have cared. But since he is…
In the summer of 218, we received some excellent news: a human caravan has arrived in these blighted lands! Joy! This is why I wanted to extend my turn until autumn, by the way: to finish the trade depot, and to trade with the dwarven caravan, if any.
Unfortunately, we still haven’t traded for shit.
The first run (because yes, a bit of savescumming was involved), I’ve received the message “Their wagons bypassed your inaccessible site”. Excuse me, what the fuck? The trade depot in the center of the map, the one I built from platinum blocks, has been graced by caravans before (ok, it was one caravan, and the only wagon that reached it scuttled itself in the doorway); are you telling me it suddenly doesn’t have a path to the map edge?
Yep. There is no path from the depot to any map edges. How fascinating and infuriating. There’s an overabundance of boulders hidden under the muck, and they’re very good at making the surface impassable for wagons. You can see them if you look from above, every thicker dot is the top of a boulder:
My last save was on 218-03-15, so I can still salvage this. I hope.
My depot has been torn down, and the one built by AvolitionBrit has been rebuilt in its old place, at level 156. There are paths in place for a safe, sealed entry for caravans, and it’s about time it’s getting completed. The path is capped off with a bridge, and the bridge is linked to a lever in the tavern, next to the other lever that controls the inner bridge; the old ‘depot access’ bridges got renamed to ‘center exit’:
(the top-left lever is labeled ‘stairway-gate’, and I have no idea where it goes. Maybe one of the internal bridges)?
Unfortunately, the linkage job was picked by one of the slowest dwarves in the fort, and the bridge was still down when the caravan spawned. On the opposite end of the map. It followed a ridiculously circuitous route, turning every single tile to bypass all the boulders blocking its path, and it almost seemed like it would make it.
Then both yaks driving the wagons decided the best path possible is on top of a tree:
Both wagons scuttled, merely 20 tiles away from the entrance:
(The humans were also attacked by a peregrine falcon corpse, but that's after trade was aborted)
Between this mess and the end of summer, the final walling of the northern edge was done. Not without pain and anger, and coercion from me: there is a new burrow covering select bits of the second cavern, that was active for most of summer and which illustrates my feelings on the matter:
Then dwarves returned to the fort, to discover that animal taming does not, in fact, pass down through generations as a heritable trait. Most of the second generation crundles have gone semi-wild, despite having a tame set of parents. Making matters worse, the feral crundles prevent animal tamers from working with the still-tame ones:
Eventually, I gave up on them and stationed a hammer squad in the animal zone. Six crundles survived, of the nearly 30 that we used to have.
Two things worry me about this fort: there are no migrants, and FPS didn’t increase.
I’ve started with 48 dwarves. Building the airlock in the third cave brought me down to 45. Then 3 very unhappy dwarves got killed by me due to lack of improvement and constant disruptions. From summer 217 until spring 218, the fort had 42 dwarves, under the limit of 45 dwarves that I have set out in d_init, and no migrants have arrived. Sealing the cave then dropped the population at 35. The civilization is still active, so that’s not it. We just don’t get migrants…
As for FPS, there is no change I can see, despite the slaughter in the second cave. In 216, there were 359 other units (all of them undead critters) and 286 dead/missing. Now in autumn 218, there are 266 others, including 22 living, and 613 dead. A good haul, but without payoff.
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Topic: The Fortress Of Friendlytreason | OVERSEERS WE NEED YOU (Read 39100 times)