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[Graebeard]

Hello there!

When not playing succession fortresses, I tend to embark with grand plans, only to lose touch with my increasingly complex games as life intercedes and distracts me for weeks or months at a time.

In an effort to keep myself accountable (and to memorialize the fort for myself), I will be posting here with updates as frequently as life will allow.  I'll detail the ongoing projects and provide a bit of narrative as we go.

If you're reading along and have suggestions for how the fort should develop please share them!  I'm also happy to dorf those who wish as the opportunity arises.

With that out of the way, onward to the embark!

It's been a while since I've played around with lots of ice, so when this embark popped up on my finder I figured I'd go for it.

Spoiler: Embark (click to show/hide)

Dang, just realized the cursors don't show up in this pic.  Embark is at the southern edge of the world map.

With a frozen river and an aquifer, I've decided to use ice as my primary above-ground construction material.  This will be slow going, as you can't cut ice boulders into blocks.  I'm going to play it as realistically as possible: no ice walls allowed in tiles adjacent to magma; in order to address my above-ground magma needs I'll have to use the stone underneath the aquifer.

We've got 100 levels of sky available, so I'm starting to think epic ice tower.  Clearly I'll have to engineer some type of ice generator.  That shouldn't be a problem with the abundance of water-producing tiles, but should prove satisfyingly complicated and dangerous.

Sand is available, so I expect glass will play a large role in magma management.

Not sure what metals/layer stone we have yet.  Hoping for iron ore, but I may have to rely on imported goblin armor/weapons as my primary iron resource.

It looks like it's time to start.  Welcome to Cryptmatches; strike the earth!

[Graebeard]

Reserved.

[Graebeard]

First update!

We made it through the aquifer, but at a high cost, I suspect.

Breaching the first layer was simple; we just dug a big hole straight down, let the water seeping through the walls freeze solid, and then dug through the middle of the ice plug to reach the earth below.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it.  Punching through the bottom of our island of dryness only led to more seeping water below.

The solution, of course, was to widen our original bore-hole to allow for it to taper farther down.  That's just what we did, but our second effort wasn't nearly as coordinated as the first.  Tobul, our miner and armorer, has been missing for a week.  We suspect he and his pick are trapped behind one of these frigid, cloudy walls holding the water back.  We may never know for sure, as none are brave enough to pierce through these deadly protections and tempt the same fate.

High as the cost may be, our one remaining miner's pick struck the warm, living bedrock beneath this frozen place.  Thank you, Tobul, for your sacrifice.  You will not be forgotten.