Well, I've been back at university for two days, I already hate one of my courses, I have a headache, and if I try to paint while I run DF my PC will melt.
I'll edit updates into this post as slabs are unearthed, as usual.
The next slab is marked "Early autumn".
With scholars here from all over the world, I've heard more stories of the old Necrothreat. Legendary heroes like the Highmax I dreamed of, great leaders like The Flame. In balance, also the crazed forumites like the mad doctor Sprin, who seems to have left his mark even on this fortress.
It's enough to make one feel positively inadequate. I suspect that I will go down in history as having kept things moving and nothing more, no great feats to my name. Perhaps there is something to be done about the risen dead, but I can't say what we could do. Thirteen left alive and none nearly skilled enough to face over sixty unfeeling, undying monsters. My thoughts are more on murderous traps and pitfalls, but I am at a loss as to how to bring it about. Pouring boiling lava over the landscape, whilst tempting, is mechanically challenging and introduces its own problems.
Siege batteries are my first thought, but our technology is so primitive I doubt we would see much success. Somehow our best and brightest are unable to find a way to angle the shots. They say it's something to do with the size of the machines. I'm no engineer. Spears feel more right in my hands than they should, but ask me to think like a mechanic and I'm immediately a mason again.
Traps seem inadequate. Perhaps if smelting operations are brought into operation, vast arrays of silver hammers could be put in place to not merely dismember but annihilate, but with so few hands available I worry it will never be done. Perhaps if I find someone who seems to be hauling and force them to it? I don't know.
The child with the strange ideas is building something. Don't ask me what. She has rocks, gems, cloth, copper, logs... I couldn't even guess at her intentions.
I've assigned a beekeeper to the metallic arts. Armok knows why we have a beekeeper. We have enough problems without adding bees. Bees! Ridiculous. She was hauling rocks around. The boulders do clutter the place, but there are more pressing issues at stake with the armies of Ur at the door. Or are they the armies of Armok? The tales of old the scholars have unearthed sometimes confuse me. Such is scholarship to the laymite.
This slab is as large as the others, despite its short text. The letters are etched slightly more carelessly than usual.
She made a thrice-damned mug. With a picture of a mug on it. I should throw her to the dead.
Operation Hammer of Justice, as I've taken to calling it, is underway. The beekeeper (beekeeper! really) is finally working up the dusty construction sites. I'm not yet sure how precisely how we'll put it all together, but we have everything we need to slay these creatures right here in the fortress with this plan, which is better than anything else I can think of.
The queen still seems to have some delusions of authority. She's trying to ban exports. I'm not sure she's all there any more.
There's a child who is apparently an absolute master poet and musician vomiting on the steps. Apparently trying to pick up equipment. I don't even pretend to understand what happens in this place any more.
The beekeeper is cleaning. You try and try and then this happens. Ugh.
And the forge is built! We need only to get the wood furnace going, and then the metalsmiths can start forging parts for the magma works.
The trolls are still thrashing around behind their walls. Don't the things need to eat? It scares me. I don't know that we'll ever be rid of the creatures.
The beekeeper is collecting copper to try to forge a screw for the pump, but I don't think it's dawned on her that she needs charcoal to fire the forge. Noooot the brightest jewel in the crown.
Well... we've got beasts. Forgotten ones, to be precise. Seek Hosoo Booratpesot about fifty urist straight down. It's an andesite crab, although Armok alone knows what andesite's doing here. This is gneiss, phyllite and marble territory. Apparently it spits? Don't know how I know that. One of the ghosts drifting past said something about an orchestra. Don't think anyone's had any instruments to play, though.
It shouldn't be able to get into the fort. The passage into that cavern is sealed, and the only way I can think it might possibly squeeze through is flight. Which it doesn't have.
It's Sandstone! We're getting close to being able to actually clear up some of the mess and make something reasonable of this fort. The research is important, but I want to leave the fortress in a useable position at the end of my tenure. It's hard without access to the outside. Wood for beds is really what I want, but I dare not send out many. Also we don't have many. Doesn't help.
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Topic: NecroThreat IV: Fortress for BFEL, God of Necromancy (Read 517467 times)