Here we go! Sorry for the delay, hope the long post makes up for it.
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Personal diary of Stormbuilder I, royal huntsman, Year 212
Live your life at the fullest, they said. Experience new things, they said. You only live once, they said.
How could you dare to fool around with the princess, they said. You are going to hang for this, they said.
Well, luckily years of supplying that mor...ehm, his glorious Majesty, our saviour from the dreadful demon kings of the past, with delicious meat for his royal meals, have at least got me that little amount of gratitude necessary to avoid the big nasty hammerer and his slade warhammer (I shudder even at thinking about it).
Instead, I was assigned to act as the overseer of one of our newest colonies - for an year. Then, if I showed great promise, I could get back to the capital, to civilization.
Everyone - barons, dukes etc, were snickering while I was being formally anointed. I soon got to discover why: IT'S ON THE GODDAMN EDGE OF THE WORLD, IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKING DESERT!!! The only thing nearby an array of hostile races. Goddamit, Majesty.
Well, couldn't be too bad, I thought. And here I am, about to be stung by a thousand bees and getting scratched by a cat.
...
As I arrive at the fortress location, I survey the area. It's not as bad as I thought - it's a huge canion with a running river. The fortress is in one of the mountain sides, and they have altered part of the river to flow into it - probably they want some cistern for fresh water. Neat. Also, they have a balcony with fortifications right over the entrance, this way crossbowdwarfs can shoot with impunity. Good.
The problems begin as I approach the door. I hail them and explain that I am here as the new annual overseer. There is some chatter on the otherside and they say they will open in a minute. Then some silence, some more chatter and some angry voices. After half an hour passes (and notice that I was patient enough to wait for whatever problem they have to be solved. It wouldn't be too good for me to start showing my rage as a first impression) a guy on the other side say
- Ehm, honored overseer, there's, ah, a problem.
+ Yes?
- We seem to have, ah, misplaced the lever which opens the main drawbridge.
+ ...
- Yeah
+ ...
- Um...honored overseer?
+ ... (I couldn't speak, for the rage would instead of me)
- Ah, well, you can of course enter through our secondary opening...there are some holes in the ceiling above part of our farm complex...the hives, precisely.
As I said, much bee stings and filthy cats were involved. I shall not speak about it anymore
I am finally in, and by Armok's beard, what a mess this is. There is no central staircase around which everything is organized, no recurring pattern in the architecture, and the workers are hopelessly unsuited for their tasks. The legendary engraver Panopticon is not engraving, and a smelly leatherworker is (and he is not working on the leather). The chief medical dwarf is an incompetent, and we have 2 very good doctors which are hauling stuff. There are two brewers, none of which very competent. Godly - one of the founders - is wasted in the military. He is a very good weaponsmith, so I'll take him off it. Meph is a good armorsmith, but there is an armor savant kicking around, so the drooling savant genius takes precedence. Sorry, Meph.
Ok, so I made huge reorders to all laboring dwarves. Assigned specialized people to the 1st priority tasks, some miscellaneous crafters cover the rest of work, and the remaining dwarves are "Unassigned" - only hauling and some random, non-used work order assigned. I shall pull from that pool when I start reinforcing the military.
Speaking of military, there is this Firehawk guy who I freely admit is a better marksdwarf then me. I think we'll get along. Also, I pulled off Godly to be a weaponsmith. He was a militia commander, let's hope he does not get into a sulk which will be immortalized by our engravers for years to come. I pulled the marksdwarf squad to full 10 dworf strenght, gave the correct training schedule and built an archery range.
And speaking about engravers, Panopticon unfortunately is our manager/broker/record keeper. He seems attached to this position too, so I will grit my teeth and force Maphol the incompetent leatherworker to smooth stone until he knows how to carve millimetric details into it with his bare hands.
Ok, a caravan from his majesty will be coming in the autumn. We have a lot of gold bars, I'll have the metalcrafter make a shitton of stuff to sell them - in case they bring something more interesting than crutches. I also ordered another jewellry shop to be set up - now we have a gem cutter and gem setter operating full time.
SLATE
I realize that the wood scarcity is a problem, especially because right now we are building bins from rock blocks. Which is fine if you are really starved for bins but...come on, those things are weighty. Haulers will be slower than turtles. So, I spend a few nights drawing and drinking (to keep awake, of course), and then hand to the miners the digging plans for the underground tree farm. When they look at me in a funny way, I explain that the peculiar shape maximizes the trees grown and minimizes the time required to haul the logs. They buy it all. Tee-hee.
Some migrants arrive...while the bridge is still closed. For a moment I am really tempted not to open it. Really, theses sods must have offended the king because between the 17 of them there not even one with a useful skill. Oh yeah, one of them is a very good marksdwarf...and utterly hopeless archer. How is that even possible? Where did the train, at the Theoretical University of Marksdwarfom? What the hell? Unfortunately, my excuse to not letting them in vanishes as I stumble in a room which contains 2 levers and a guy who is praying to Armok. Pray that he gives me patience, priest. And speaking about priesthood, while is our most skilled strand extractor blabblinb at the altar praying for metal instead of extracting gold strands? Grrr.
As I open the bridge, migrants rush in. Ok. Cats rush out - great! I order the bridge closed, but some idiot kid rushes out too. I sound the alarm and order everyone to stay in the safety zone, but the goddamn cats manage to get in before the bridge gets closed. Dammit!
My metalcrafter is harvesting plants instead of crafting gold stuff. Dammit metalcrafter!
The drow ambush a pet genie which had been locked outside. Some giant ant drones joined the fun in chasing it, and they wandered closed enough to the shooting terrace. Yes! I order the squad to rush on it, but I discover that:
A - 7 out of the 10 are too dumb to stand next to the fortifications
B - 2 out of the 3 remaining have no ammo.
Dammit people! I finally get some ammo too and start shooting. Firehawk remarks that I always seem to aim for the groin. Yeah, so what?
As they flee, I come downstairs and notice a pack of 6-7 cats skittering around around and trying to hide from me. Suspicious, I follow them for a bit, and suddenly realize how many cats there are in the fortress. 40! Fourty goddamn little buggers! Catsplosion imminent! BUTCHER THEM! KILL THEM WITH FIRE AND BUTCHER THEM!!!
The purge has been initiated. Only 2 males and a female will remain. And my loyal dog will watch her like a hawk to ensure that no further cat breeding is achieved.
While am trying some exploratory digging to find coal and restart our cold forges, I also order rock statues to be built. As statues are the only non-passable thing which can be built on floors (that I am aware of), I will set them on the terrace so that my dumb colleagues are forced to stand right next to the fortifications, and actually shoot.
FELSITE
The months starts with bad news. The alarm rings - a siege is on us. The guards release smoke signals which will keep migrants and trading caravans away. As I rush on the shooting terrace to have a look at the enemy, I am perplexed to see ... nothing. The guards mumble something about sounds reaching from the caverns. After a moment of seething and silent fury, I explain to them that whoever is raising these sounds in the caves can't reach us, let alone the surface. But the damage is already done. Sigh. We'll just have to wait for whoever is down there to get bored and leave.
The cat slaughter has began! The refuse pile is flooding with bones - and I have set the crafters to make cat bone bolts non-stop. Useless in life, useful in death. Filthy little beasts.
The coal issues are becoming too irritating to deal with. I order an exploratory stairway built as down as possible, and it hits the great magma sea as early as level -70. Neat. Also, everyone is celebrating - drinking and throwing their shoes in the air. When I inquire on why they are throwing their shoes (the don't need an excuse for drinking) they tell me that we have discovered raw adamantine. Great! Praise the miners indeed! I rush down and try to spot it, but find absolutely nothing. How did they spot it, by smell? For fuck's sake.
What is more interesting however is that very close to our stairway there is a magma pipe...rising up to level -52 and there connecting with a caver. That's pretty close...just 50 levels. After a week of reflection, I announce to the dwarves PROJECT VULCANUS. Here is the initial step:
The entire area will be digged out, but this lattice will be channeled out, and then covered with floors. When we are ready, we will pull out single floor tiles and build magma smelters, forges and crucibles. No more fuel needed, muahahaha. I will need to think out the logistics, through. All the metal bars are up here.
Mafol keeps wasting his time running from one floor to the other. I sometimes think that the previous overseer assigned him as stone detailer as some sort of quirky punishment. No matter - he is going to keep doing this until he can shape stone to millimetric precision with his bare hands. I will drag him to the status of legendary engraver kicking and screaming if I must. Keep smoothing that stone, Mafol.
A goblin ambush. Cats wander out. Good! Concubine chases them. Bad. Concubine turns into porcupine. Sigh. Also, I barely managed to close the gates before the goblins got into the fortress. My guys are slow.
Oh, look, 9 migrants chose exactly this moment to arrive. They are so dead. One of them is a high master bone setter too - the only medical discipline I am not well covered. Ok then, time for desperate measures. They are drafted into an improvised squad called "Dead Meat", and charge the golems. Under my crowssbow fire and Dead Meat charge, they decide that it's time to get out of here. Huzzah!
Now however I have 29 Unassigned...not good.
MALACHITE.
Tons of mastercraft cat bone bolts. Yeah!!!
Dammit metalcrafter! Why are you so slow?
Also, are orthoclase and mica magma safe? Hmm...don't remember, I left my magmacyclopedia at home. Time for some dwarven science I guess...which means learning on the job. Worst case scenario, we lose a miner. We have been breeding too much lately, anyway.
GALENA
Invisible siege is off, thanks Armok. Just in time not to risk the caravan too.
An idiot kid goes moody and starts screeming that it needs gems, logs, bars, silk, and at least 4-5 other things. For some reason, instead of giving him a sound beating, the other adults try to accomodate his requests. I swear, if he produces an iridium crutch or something, I will either throw him into the magma pipe, or wall him into a danger room. Which, they tell me, is actually dangerous, no matter how much armor you wear.
Well, at least the underground tree farm is complete. Look at this beauty!
AUTUMN
Ohgodohgodohgod. We were just minding our business, on the shooting terrace, when suddenly a shadow passed over us and an automaton dropped dead on poor Urist. They are freaking doing a drop on us, riding giant owls!!! How, what, why? We lost three guys in the first seconds, then a violent scuffle ensued. I immediately ordered the bridge to be closed, but this ambush had spawned too close us: 7-8 automatons were already inside the first floor. Panicked, I had all the floor hatches to be closed (thank you, overseer who installed them), and then on level 0 pandemonium ensued: the imbecilling militia on the terrace refused to come down and were instead shooting at automatons who were cut off on the plains. Morons. Downstairs, automatons were raising all sorts of hell, killing civilians and for some reason violently focusing on the turkeys, once they found them. I don't know what to make of this. Do they think that the turkeys are our secret overlords and masterminds? That is an interesting idea, but I don't think it holds much merit.
In any case, the ground floor was cleared up, but with a lot of casualties. Out of the original 4 melee and 10 ranged soldiers, 3 and 4 remained. All because of the stupidy of whoever took 10 minutes to pull the lever.
I admit that over the next few days I was not fully in control of myself. It was just too much - the pettiness of the king, the idiocy of my the people I was supposed to oversee, the petulance of migrants and kids, the pure evilness of our domestic animals. I think I ran around and punched people and things for at least a month. ALSO, THERE IS GOODAMN MIASMA EVERYWHERE AND NO ONE IS BOTHERING TO HAUL THE CORPSES AWAY!!! And that goddamn kid finally finished his "artifact" - a bone cabinet depicting the ascension to power of the first demon which ruled over our civilization as a tyrant. Is he mocking us? I will kill that little bugger. A better stone detailer than Mofol arrived. It does not matter! KEEP SMOOTHING THE STONE, MAFOL!
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Diary of an unnamed dwarf found in the ruins of a dwarven colony.
Today our overseer finally went insane. He started babbling and shooting bolts at us, filled with rage. Our melee fighters showed up and chopped him quickly with their axes. As he was falling, I swear I could see the eyes of Soph, our most famous fighter, flashing red for a second, like the eyes of Stormbuilder were. Must have been a trick of light, of course.
Unfortunately the deaths didn't stop here. The survivors of the original marksdwarf squad were in a spiral of depression and rage. After Storm, other two went berserk and at the end Firehawk's mind snapped too. He did not attack us, but he has reverted to the mind of a kid.
The caravan from the mountain homes finally comes, and we bring out all the gold crafts that were done this year. They jaws dropped - we sold them stuff for more than a quarter million bucks. We got lot of bars (steel, titanium, mithril, slademantine), 2 tomes of life(as if we will ever manage to build a philosophers' garden...untranslated dwarven runes would have been more useful, we are gathering the materials for hall of the mountain king), 3 slade and 4 bullet turrets, craptons of wood and food, some types of glass (for eventual weird moods), shittons of leather and cloth (leather for padded shirts - each of us can wear 3-4 of them - and cloth for clothes), shittons of food components.
Our new overseer - the guy who killed Stormbuilder and now calls himself Storm II; I guess a sort of macabre joke - does not seem really certain what to do with the turrets. So far he has only set one of them outside the entrance, surrounded by fortifications and a moat, to act as thieves/ambush spotter and wildlife shooter.
WINTER
Storm called over all the unassigned dwarfs and gruffly handed them a crossbow. He explained that they would be kept in reserve as non-activated squad. I guess he just wants some more people to have real weapons, in case our interior is breached again. We have 3200 bolts, so when they are jobless, they can go and train I guess.
Also, everything is coming to a grinding halt. With the caravan purchases, we have just too much stuff to carry, not enough unassigned, and these rock bins and really really heavy. There has been a corpse in the trading depot for weeks and no one bothers to take it away.
OBSIDIAN
Stranglers arrive for a siege - about 40 of them, all mounted. They came in shooting range though, and very soon enough of them died to make the others run off like beaten dogs.
The good news? Project Vulcanus is completed. We have 3 magma smelters, 3 magma forges and 3 magma crucibles. We also have made space for stockpiles and other workshops around.
A new year comes, and one of our guys dies of old age. Let's hope this is not a sign on how the rest of the year will pass.
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Well, this was a ride. Sorry for the mishaps, people whose dorfs I killed. I didn't redorf you because I don't know what you prefer.
I think whoever is after me is off to a good start - as soon as the current hauling issues are solved, we have magma forges. We will need to set bar stockpiles there, and perhaps haul in some food&drinks / make dining hall. I ordered some magma armory/weaponry blueprints/ untranslated runes, and the materials for hall of the mountain king are almost done (if you are missing silver, transmute it). Also, we have quite a lot of metal bars.
So, have fun!
I am attaching some final images.
file link:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6693
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Topic: Hill Of Rites ☼MASTERWORK☼ mod succession fort (Read 31454 times)