Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

Firedamp ('Grisou') and the penitents

(1/2) > >>

isitanos:
Anybody who has read stories involving a coal mine (hopefully the excellent book The Child of the Cavern ('Les Indes Noires') by Jules Vernes) will know about firedamp, a deadly flammable gas that builds up in those kinds of mines. It caused the death of many miners before the safe lantern and modern ventilation techniques were invented.Apart from the gas itself, an awesome story element that should make it into DF (imho) is the role of the penitent: they gave that name to people whose role was to make firedamp explode before it could build up too much and threaten to crumble the mine. They dressed more or less like a monk to protect themselves, hence the name of penitent, and often had a pet bird that helped them in their task. A crazy dayjob if there was one, and in fact penitents often went crazy (and probably were already to accept such a job).To learn more about all this (and read a great story on top of that), read the book! I found it freely available online, under the name The Underground City, so you don't have an excuse. I read it in my mothertongue french when I was younger, and it has great atmosphere. Toady, if ever you or your brother have time to read that book, it's a great source of inspiration for anything cave or mine-related. Oh, and I hope you read Journey to the Center of the Earth, also by Jules Vernes. It's a blast, and also has nice ideas for this game...

mickel:
Cave gasses and explosions is something that's entered my mind too. I wonder how those dwarves ventilate the caverns...Oh, and thanks for the book tip!  :)[ October 12, 2007: Message edited by: mickel ]

Tamren:
Oxygen would be provided partially by cave life. Mushrooms and the like.

jester:
The Dwarvish "knockers" in Terry Pratchetts Disc world, are good to, Partially a priest training thing, armed with a slingshot that fires small fireballs and thick layers of mail and Chain they crawl into the deep dark holes where the firedamp is with no light and fire away hoping they are far enough to avoid being cooked.  Survive a few times and you start to get a deeper feeling for the mountian/the sounds from the deep, or just go mad.  Either way it makes good priest training and sounds like something that the Dwarves would go for.
(this is probably ripped off from the books mentioned above but Prachett does good work and describes the idea quite well in 'The fifth elephant').

Armok:
quote:Originally posted by jester:
<STRONG>The Dwarvish "knockers" in Terry Pratchetts Disc world, are good to, Partially a priest training thing, armed with a slingshot that fires small fireballs and thick layers of mail and Chain they crawl into the deep dark holes where the firedamp is with no light and fire away hoping they are far enough to avoid being cooked.  Survive a few times and you start to get a deeper feeling for the mountian/the sounds from the deep, or just go mad.  Either way it makes good priest training and sounds like something that the Dwarves would go for.
(this is probably ripped off from the books mentioned above but Prachett does good work and describes the idea quite well in 'The fifth elephant').</STRONG>Yea, Discworld always reminds me of DF, I'm currently reading THUD and there is LOTS of ideas that would fit DF perfectly, Toady and Threetoe really should read them if they have not but I'm quite shore they have. (<- bad grammar)
One of the ting I'm looking forward to in some distant future is recreating Discworld whit worldgen parameters only, whits ought to be possible, will it? (<- worse grammar)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page