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[charred_gp]

Oh boy, I need shells. Time for my tomb to be made

[Kagus]

The Trials of Toolgod: Book Three

I admit that, with all the fighting and scrambling, I had been somewhat concerned for my safety in the past few years.  But now that things have toned down a little, I can realize that my fears were baseless and were purely the imaginations of a hassled and uncertain mind.  Today, I forced myself to talk with one of the guards so he could give me a tour of the fort's defenses.



The young buck smiled at me.
  "And here, ma'arm, we have the control room.  This control room features an open-air design that is placed near to the front to ensure that any dwarves running from big nasty enemies will only have to run a short distance from the gates in order to reach the safety of these levers."
  "But won't that mean that invading forces will also have just as short a walk before they're in control of our primary defenses?"
The guard looked at me, puzzled.
  "I...  I don't suppose I'd thought about it that way, ma'arm."
  "I guess not..."
Collecting himself again, the guard showed me the general construction of the fort.
  "...and here we have the west gate, protected by two rows of three-wide cage traps, and the eastern gate which is similarly protected.  Both are solid iron drawbridges, geared and ready to raise up and repel any attacker that dares try and knock it down.  We also have an emergency southern gate installed for added diversity."
  "Southern gate?  I don't see anything."
The guard pointed to a fisherdwarf that was crawling over some rubble about fifty feet away from us.
  "That?!  But that's just a hole in the wall!  Literally!  It looks like someone half-decided to put a slab of rock there and then got bored!  It's an open floodgate to the outside world, and it hasn't even got a secondary wall to keep it away from the fortress proper!  It's just a dead straight run!"
  "Exactly ma'arm, that's why it's the emergency gate.  If anyone came through it, it'd be an emergency."
  "I'm going back inside..."



  "Hey there Deler, where ya headed?"
  "I'm going downstairs to sulk in the forges...  You?"
  "Oh, I'm on official renewal duty from the mayor's office, so I was just heading down to the mead hall for a drink.  Listen, you might want to come along...  The lower levels are kind of blocked off."
  "What?!  What do you mean?  Blocked off by what?"
  "Well...  They stink."
I clasped my hand against my forehead, holding it there for a moment before sliding it down my face in an attempt to wipe away the exasperation that was boiling up.
  "They stuffed more bodies in the staircase, didn't they."
  "Well yeah, there's that, but some folks have been talking about a new stench down there.  Something in the caverns is really making the place smell something awful."
  "In the caverns?  Like what?"
  "Well, there have been rumors..."



  "Save a drink for me, I need to go into my room and weep for a while..."

[SethCreiyd]

You could pit a bull down there to test the spider's fighting abilities.  Also, there might be cave shellfish in the water.  We might be able to save charred's life.

Awesome turn so far.

[cappstv]

I feel as if there was something I forgot to warn you about. Whatever it is, I am sure you can handle it.

[DuckThatQuacks]

I'd like to sign up for a turn, if that's all right. Looks like it could be a Fun fortress.

[Kagus]

The Trials of Toolgod: Act Four

It was a brisk spring day, and the fisherdwarf had just been murdered.

The paperwork had apparently just made it through the bureaucracy to patch up the so-called "southern gate", and a mason had rushed out with a pile of mudstone to start patching things up soon after I'd bailed from my tour of the defenses.

The dwarf we had seen climbing over the rubble earlier, one 'Momus Tradedshimmer', was pounced upon and used as a dance floor by one of the prowling meese shortly after clambering over the last stone.  Momuz was a dear friend of mine, as well as that of some 48 other dwarves...  He will be missed.  No funerary arrangements have been planned as of yet, due to there being a huge frikkin' moose sitting on him.

What few dwarves pass as the fort's military, some of them also friends of Momuz, rushed their gear on and ran outside to fight the beast that had slain their fellow pioneer.



I mean, after all...  Sure, in life it weighed about 800 pounds, but take away all that meat and fat and what are you left with?  Bare bones, that's what.  Piece of piss.


Much later...



It had to be a fucking pond, didn't it.


Today we mourn the loss of both Momuz and Ustuth, victims of this cruel and heartless world.  Momuz takes with him the sorrowful pleas of his many friends, and Ustuth takes with her even more whining from her even greater group of admirers.  She also takes with her a full suit of steel gear and several months worth of training for being an idiot and putting herself between a charging moose and a significant body of water.  Rest In Pity, you moron.

Three skeletal mose and one dwarf later, we're fairly safe.  For the moment at least.  No other threats have been spotted on the overland, and the caverns don't have any holes big enough to let more than the "presence" of the giant rotting spider into our near company.  And with the "southern gate" finally fixed, we can actually relax a little bit.  I've sent the mayor a letter in regards to the construction of more cage traps to defend our entrances.  Hopefully, it will get duly processed and I'll get my job as a blacksmith back.  A dwarf can dream, can't she?

[Kagus]

Very little to report.  Haven't been spending much time on this, due to a revised daily schedule.  We're still in spring last I checked, and I was just trying to plan out some basic low-level housing blocks in one of the soil layers.

One thing I should mention is that our fort's ONE AND ONLY MINER (so far as I can tell) has been fairly unhappy recently because she just tunneled through one of her own engravings, which was apparently a masterwork.  Also at least one of her friends died, I'm not sure which of the recently deceased she was familiar with.

Ustuth was apparently someone's lover.  Normally this is a fairly heavy blow to the surviving individual, but he seemed quite pleased with life in general.  Yes, it's that cramped, crowded, chaotic dining room that did it (I refuse to give any credit to the decorative stone carpeting some people call MASS ENGRAVING WOOHOO!).

I'd love to expand, but...  I don't really know where I should expand to.  Currently we're situated smack dab in the middle of a cavern outcropping, and as such we're fairly stuck as far as expansion is concerned.  A few levels up we have a couple layers of solid rock, plus the soil layers above, but digging down or to the sides is just going to get messy.  Very messy.

There's the possibility of just conforming to the cavern layout and creating a little "hanging fortress" where people walk from outcropping to outcropping via bridges, but that could open up the fort to flying creature incursions.  It wouldn't be TOO bad otherwise however, since most subterranean critters have the decency to remain cloaked and thus incapable of spooking wandering citizens.


Oh, and some of the dwarves have early stages of cave adaptation.  I noticed this when I activated the military.  Options are to move the primary entrance down a level, or cook up some way for dwarves to sunbathe now and then.

[Kagus]

We caught a fox!




A clever fisherdwarf ran out, was accosted by this fiend, and ran back towards the fort via our eastern not-quite-so-helpless gate.  Now we've got a skeletal fox in a cage.

You know, these things really should be worth something what with it being undead and all, but I have a feeling traders are going to try and cut a lower deal because they're "incomplete goods".


I've laid out a simple tenement block design in one of the soil layers, along with plans for a new dining room connected to a food processing area above.  I've also drafted a couple people into mining detail.

I'm thinking the long plan will be to turn the upper regions into a civilian zone.  Housing, dining and other standard day-to-day facilities will be placed here, due to the ease of laying out large amounts in short time and the ease of farming (not to mention the low cost of peasant housing).  And so far as I know, wells can extend as far down as required in order to bring up water, so that shouldn't be an issue.

The current fortress proper is crammed into a tricky area.  By extracting most civilian duties from there we can clean up some space and turn it into a militarized industrial zone.  With a few squads and patrols set up, we can risk digging into some of the open spaces in order to access new ore deposits and put down whatever mid-to-high tier processing workshops.  Higher class housing will also show up down here because of the room value added by smoothed stone.

There are a number of benefits to this.  Firstly, with regular patrols to defend against animal incursions, there will always be a military force around should a failed mood cause someone to go postal.  Secondly, since the important housing will be down here anyways, certain nobles may find their rooms being equipped with some very open windows looking out over the darkness below.

[SethCreiyd]

Speaking of failed moods and dwarves going postal, is charred still alive?

Also, would you please re-dwarf me with the a male on the next migrant wave?  I would like him to be drafted and given the crummiest weapon we have lying around, that he might become a master in its use.

[Kagus]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Charred is still sitting in there and screaming about his necessary items.  I'll see what I can do about reincarnating you.  We could certainly use another thug.

I'm back out in California, which means I need to install DF on this machine and transfer the save across.  Then we'll see how well this tiny little laptop can withstand the processing terror that is Dwarf Fortress...


While Charred hasn't yet gone splat from frustration, we do have some interesting tomfoolery going on in the fort.  I'll let y'all in on the insanity next update.  Crazy little bastards...

EDIT: Speaking of which, we should probably get a jail set up.  Just saying.

[KaguroDraven]

May I be dwarfed? If possible I would like to be a male hammerdwarf, with the heaviest material availible for my hammer.

[Kagus]

The Trials of Toolgod: Part Five

Life in the fortress has been somewhat peculiar of late, but seeing as that could be said of most days I guess it's just how things normally are here.

Charred GP (I must admit to never having been entirely certain as to how his name is pronounced) shocked and upset the group of mourners and well-wishers that had gathered around his obsession with bodyparts by announcing today that he had everything he needed, and would begin momentarily.

Many cheered with joy at this revelation, rejoicing that Charr would not be condemned to insanity through his failings.  Others simply lost interest at the prospect of yet another work of masterful craftsdwarfship, and a very small group was positively insulted by the fact that their shrieking and wailing had been wasted on someone who was not going to hurl themselves over a cliff after all.

But the kickoff of Charr's project was not the only event of note.  Oh no, certainly not.  Certain urban renewal plans had been put into place in another area of the fort, and the fortress's chief, lead and veteran miner (let's do be frank here, she was the only professional miner we employed), Geshud Temptedink, was put in charge of the task of breaking down a few walls in order to clear out a new workspace for honest laborers.

Little did the overseers know that Geshud had been an active 'spontaneous artist' in her youth, and was indeed the creative font that led to a great deal of the graffiti spoiling our halls.  In the act of breaking down a new passageway she was forced to throw her pick into some of her own treasured works, lest her old ties be known to the leaders of the program.

In the later days however, the internal torment caused from her restrained creativity, her lack of truthfulness and her betrayal of her own principles finally proved to be too much for one head to bear.  In a fit of rage she broke down the door to Eclipse Twilightglazed's (...) home and attacked him as he slept.  She was poised and ready to strike at him when the valiant fortress guard barged in and forced the two dwarves apart, stopping any senseless bloodshed in its tracks and making the world a better place for everyone as they escorted her to the relaxation therapy that Geshud needed so badly.

...or at least, that's most likely what would have happened, had there actually been some form of lawkeeping in this gods-forsaken donkey pit.  Since we don't, Geshud just broke into Eclipse's house, tossed all his furniture to the floor, and hacked off his left hand before calming down and going to clean Twilightglazed's blood off of her.


In an attempt to make things more centralized and accessible, the powers that be have decided to place a well opening in the sheet rock that makes up the ceiling of the cavern below us.  While the construction itself was a complete success, the effect was a relative failure overall due to most citizens complaining about the length of time it took to crank the wheel, or about how 'overcomplicated' the whole concept of a well was.  The Office of Structural Development and Planning has responded to the outcries by making new plans for a muddy pit with some puddles in it.  Voter turnout increased by twelve points, not that anybody cares since this government is effectively just a bureaucratic dictatorship with the head person appointed primarily through a popularity contest.


Oh, how I do long for the mountainhomes...  To see civilization yet again, and get out of this horrific backwater.  I should never have left my office in The Somewhat Hush-Hush Order of Metalworkers to come out here...

...but enough daydreaming, I have work to do.  And if I fall to the disease of lethargy like many of my fellow dwarves in this fort, then I will have no ground to stand upon should I wish to decry their moral and intellectual failings.



Note:  It's funny, I've made arrangements in the past to get around the time spent on this machine because I was afraid it would quail under the storm of pain and hatred that is DF.  Now that I've actually tried it, it seems almost as though this dinky little laptop is actually faster than my gaming rig back home.

Funny stuff, eh?

[Kagus]

Alright, I need to whip my life schedule into some serious shape, and as such Murdercloisters most likely isn't going to be getting as huge a priority as it has.  And seeing how often I've been updating this otherwise, It'd be safe to assume I really won't be doing much of anything with this for some time.

I can upload the save I've got if you like, or whatever else would be deemed the best course of action.  Just a shame I didn't make it to "The Trials of Toolgod: Section Eight".


Cheers.

[Glacial]

You trapped a skeletal fox for the fortress zoo. You're hereby morally obligated to upload the save.

[SethCreiyd]

Yep, uploading the save would be cool.  Thanks for playing Kagus, it's too bad there won't be a conclusion but life's gotta come first.  Good luck with your stuff.