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[banealoe]

Greetings! I am Banealoe, a new Overseer! By Overseer, I mean the guy who watches over the dwarves and talks to them telepathically, thus guiding them in their everyday lives. This is a History (or shall I say a small part of it) of the dwarves of The Honorable Gates.

Before I begin, I have to inform you that I see things differently from the other Overseers. I have borrowed a graphic lens from Phoebus, thus making the ASCII symbols, as humans call it, easy to my eyes.

I will begin from a few days just before we embark. The seven dwarves who were chosen on this expedition don't know that I am with them. I am tasked by the our Great Leader to construct a military outpost that will hopefully become a great fortress. It is only the year 125, but our perpetual war with the goblins requires us to expand our borders and strengthen our military. The little guys I command don't know anything about this mission, of course. They were simply told that the Mountainhomes were getting too cramped because of overpopulation and that they needed to find a new home.

Here is an image of our chosen site.
 
Figure 1


It's a ways off the Mountainhomes and the closes foreign nation belongs to the goblins. What's good is that there's a stream for fresh drinking water (as if a dwarf would choose water over booze), a supply of clay (what do you say if you rush a Potter? Hurry, Potter!), and Flux Stone for Steel production.

Here is a list of the dwarves that I will have to lead.

Figure 2


Yeah, I know. They're a bunch of unskilled amateurs. The only thing they're probably good at is drinking. But you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I'll have to say that I can sense potential in these guys. It will be my job to hone their skills in various activities. I almost forgot to mention that the fortress is called Stukonurdim, the Squashedtowers.

Here is a list of the items that I will be bringing.

Figure 3


If you're asking about the huge amount of sand, it's because I plan to defend the fort with glass weapon traps. They're easier to make than metal trap components.

And so begins our adventure as Ilasmestthos, The Absolute Citadel. Quite ironic if you ask me.

[banealoe]

We arrive on the 1st Granite 126 in the early spring. Man, it's freezing. There's so much snow around. I hope the turkeys and goats we brought with us don't freeze to death. We're not that DESPERATE for food supplies.
Oh, there's no mountain or even a hill, I guess we have to dig down.

Figure 4


I began to consult the Dwarf Therapist to know what jobs I can assign to the dwarves. Turns out that they really don't have any skills. Oh well, I hope they just follow what their conscience AKA their Overseer tells them. I'd like to remind you that I only use these tools to make playing easy, I don't cheat in any way.

I assigned 3 miners, 2 woodcutters, and 2 farmers. The other odd jobs are assigned randomly in such a way that there are at least two dwarves per job just in case one is too lazy or is doing something else.

I let them dig into the sandy clay wall (good for subterranean farming) and let the woodcutters chop the nearby trees. We're going to need charcoal real soon.

Figure 5


Oh good, the snow has melted. It's already the 20th of Granite and the dwarves were able to dig a small farm with some space for food stockpiles. And an adjacent space for the workshops (not visible in this picture). Just a layer below us is bauxite, a magma-safe stone, along with some chalk, although I'm not sure if it's magma-safe too. The animals look fine and are happily grazing to the south.

Figure 6


The miners say they struck tetrahedrite! Good! We'll have a small supply of copper once we begin smelting the ores. This level looks good for offices and bedrooms.

I did a quick scan of the surroundings and-WHAT THE HELL!? Where did these Thrips mutants come from!?

Figure 7





Figure 8



There they are, just a short walk away from my-WOODCUTTERS!? They're those mosquito-things on the west, and my woodcutters are to the east. Looks like we have to enter combat soon. Although I was hoping for some goblin blood, these Thrips Men and Women will make for good practice dummies if they ever step out of line.


It's already 9th Slate 126 and the first plump helmets are ready for harvest. Food will be the least of our problems. I also let the other idlers deposit our stuff to the custom stockpile which holds anything but food, wood, stone, refuse, and corpses. The stockpile to the west is for food and seeds. I also banned the cooking of any plump helmets. Thankfully, the thrips passed us by without a hitch.

Figure 9



What the-? It just began raining and 5 of the guys fell asleep on the stockpiles?

Figure 10



Oh boy, we have a long way to go.

[joeclark77]

Well if you're dwarfing people, throw a "Joe" in there somewhere.  Perhaps as a captain of speardwarves.

[Manze]

This seems like it'll be a fun fort. Also, make sure you're not cooking the seeds of the plump helmets as well as the food itself.

If you're dwarfing, I'd like a miner named Manze.

[banealoe]

Well, I apologize as I am new to this forum, so I'm not sure what "dwarfing" really is. If someone could please explain that to me, I would be very grateful. I think it sounds like roleplaying or something.
Truth is, I've been an Overseer (aka Lord Drowner) for around two years now, but having dial-up for a crappy excuse of an internet connection meant that I'd rather play DF than go online. If you would notice by the differences in the screenshots (or future screenshots)  I go/would go to the net cafe to upload stories and pics. I actually just record games at home then review them just before I post. By the time I'm posting this, the fortress is already halfway through its second year and we've got four migration waves so far, plus a mayor appointment.

Okay...so I was just checking the record while I was typing this up, and I'm sorry it broke. The computer in here probably couldn't handle the memory requirement. The FPS meter when I was playing was 98-100, but the FPS in here when I replayed the movie dropped to around 30 or something, and I'm getting weird graphics and stuff like that.

So as a faulty Overseer, we're going to continue the story on the 22nd Malachite, Mid-summer of 127.

Figure 11



As you can see in this image, we already have 66 dwarves in the fortress. We've also traded with the dwarven caravan from the Mountainhomes last autumn, and we've traded with some of those tree-huggers, I mean elves last spring. You know what we traded? We sold our green glass spike balls! We told the elves that the material was made from a green meteor! They actually believed it! Therefore, we made a killing out of the bargain. We purchased several rope reed cloth bins and wood. Yes, wood. Now why would we purchase wood? The map is filled with trees! Well, I'm thinking ahead. Until we can find a magma source, we'll have to stick with using tons of charcoal for our weapons. There you go.

Remember the image when the land was covered in snow? Well, due to global warming, we only had one snow storm, in the spring, and the pools and river were frozen from Late Autumn to Late Winter. I'd note that the snow melts every 20th Granite in the Early Spring, so maybe the dwarves can hold a snow-melting festival. We'd feature eating contests to see who can hold the most turkey eggs in his/her mouth, arm-wrestling contests (and to avoid discrimination, we've also included an "incapacitated persons arm-wrestling contest"), drinking contests of frozen alcoholic beverages, drinking contests of normal alcoholic beverages, drinking contests of sewer brew and other gross stuff, drinking contests straight from the barrel, and pretty much 10 more contests involving drinking. We our huge supply of plump helmets, we can brew liters upon liters of alcohol! But I have a question though, where does all the yeast come from? That's probably something for the programmer to answer. The "Others" listed on our food supply is actually a huge pile of turkey egg roasts and quarry bush leaves roasts, and a little bit of fish roasts. See? I told ya, no need for cave wheat on embark! But I still purchased two bags of seeds from the dwarven caravan. And I turned off the cook seed choices in the kitchen.

Due to our new tetrahedrite resource, we were able to forge new picks and battleaxes for the newcomers. I hate it when people move to the outpost thinking that this is a f*ckin' vacation.

Figure 12



The unspoken rule of the fortress is: Those who don't work, don't get to eat. (Yes, I'm planning on turning this into Briggs, for all Fullmetal Alchemist fans out there, only without snow.) We've got a bunch of hunters out huntin' which means more meat on the tables. Speaking of tables, here's our dining room. It's the one full of dwarves on the east of the stairwell.

Figure 13



It's been smoothed out and has a silver statue on the corner. The room to the northeast is the mayor's room. The mayor fills in all the other administrator duties except for the broker. His room has two copper statues and it's been engraved from wall to floor. The room to the south is the dormitory. It's also been smoothed out and it has a ton of beds for all those lazybones. I'm planning to put more statues and art stuff to make those dwarves happy. Last time I got a miserable dwarf, I lost 63 lives in a huge bloodbath.

Why do I use a dormitory? Coz' apparently, there's a vampire in our midst. It already killed a skilled miner. If only there was a way for me to have a full-body pat-down inspection and a physical examination before letting anyone get in...

Figure 14



Stupid vampires, don't they know that humans have more blood than dwarves!?

As for our fishermen, no need to worry about ambushers, because they have their own fishing platform, safe from the outside world.

Figure 15




It's directly connected underground to our main work area. There's the river on the far east of the screenshots. I also covered the river slopes with floors just in case the goblins have amphibious mounts.

Figure 16




See the isolated floods on the west side of the tunnel? I'm trying to drain the murky pools so i can have a larger workspace for my dwarves. Don't worry, I'm going to cover it up with floors once they're dry.

Figure 17



The first two batches of turkey eggs have hatched, I had the 30 or less poults transferred to a cage to avoid FPS lags. Those are the hens locked up in a hatchery just north of the cage. We're gonna have a turkey feast in two years! The nanny goats gave birth to around five kids and they're happily grazing with their moms and dad. I purchased some animals for butchery and I trained a recently purchased dog for war purposes. This is going to be a military fortress after all. We recently had a kea mutant problem but the cage traps took care of that. I'm looking forward to a drawbridge across a channel and a narrow hallway with a ballista for defence. I'm not training a military yet, I'm confident that the traps can handle that. As for our wood supply, I have a ton of idlers, so they can just haul all the wood in once the miners dig out a huge warehouse. Then our fortress will be self-sufficient even during a siege.

I'm still investigating on the blood-sucking case. I've also disabled hunting for the dwarves and converted them to either fishers or farmers. That way, we won't have to worry about anyone getting left out during a lockdown.


Our fortress had some problems in the autumn. Someone went crazy when he stayed in a workshop for too long.  He kept muttering things like "...stone...rock...cloth...thread.." and I have all of those things on the stockpiles! Why the hell didn't he get them!? In the end, he went berserk and started chasing down our mayor, so I had to organize an emergency squad to put the farmer out of his misery.

Figure 18



See that yellow "X" on the west? Yep, that's his corpse you're staring at. He was executed right at the entrance. I just wish the militia didn't turn it into a public execution, now almost everyone at the fort has witnessed death!

We also had a spike in the number of goblin and kobold thieves and snatchers. The cage traps were put to good use. Although we were only able to capture one, the human caravan that arrived there took care of the rest. I gotta thank those Human Lashers. I think it is a good idea to have the depot just outside the entrance. Instant militia!

Figure 19



Guess what...

I finally found the vampire! I don't have any evidence, though. I just have a feeling, a really strong feeling. I hope she gets executed.

Hurray! A Minotaur arrived! I assigned my emergency Squad, The Nourishing Halls to kill him, but he got to the traps first. I wonder if we can train him or cook him...

Figure 20



I was finally able to clear the ramps around the entrance. I also dug out a two-wide ditch with a red bauxite drawbridge across, the lever will be placed in the dining room. Next up is a narrow corridor for the goblin skewer aka ballista.

That's it for today! Thanks to Manze and Joe for their replies!

[Baloun]

Hi!
Dwarfing or "dorfing" is a action, when you took one of the dwarves in the fortress (usually with some skills that the dorfed user require) and you gave them the nickname they wish. Also you should monitor their action a bit in your reports. Example:

I wish to be dorfed as a beekeeper with a nickname "Baloun". He should be lazy but quite helpfull if needed.

You then go to the game, choose one dorf, who looked like he could do the job, you name him... And then? If it fits your story, you could from time to time use him in your play.

[sealclubber]

I wouldn't mind being dorfed as a mace wielder 

[banealoe]

Alright guys, thanks for your answers. I'll try to dwarf or dorf you when I find the time to play Dwarf Fortress, maybe tomorrow or day after. I'm actually a noob at League of Legends and I also find it addicting. But no other game beats the depth of Dwarf Fortress, right? It has closest-as-possible-to-real life parameters that if it was a 3d game you'd need a supercomputer.

I'm from the Philippines, and it's a holiday this April 9. In honor of all of the heroes in the entire history of my nation, especially to the unnamed ones who died in the Death March. Wanna know what it was? Look it up on Wikipedia. My grandfather was a young survivor of WW2 and my great grandfather was a guerrilla fighter.

I'll have to apologize in advance to those who want to be dwarfed in the military, because I rely mostly on traps and seige weapons, but I'll still train a good number of dwarves once we complete our Project: Absolute Defense. They'll probably "pa-troll" the area killing things like wild goats and badgers.

[banealoe]

What's New?

Someone took over a craftsdwarf's workshop.

Figure 21



New traps in the fort entrance.

Figure 22



I plan to cover up the entrance with floors to avoid goblin archers from shooting down my animals and dwarves.


Figure 23



The ranger who took over a workshop made this.

Figure 24



Some goblins tried to ambush a caravan from the mountainhomes. I hope the traps work.

Figure 25




We survived the small ambush, thanks to the defenders of the caravan.
Aaand it looks like the vampire is out to kill again.

Figure 26



I'm gonna stop for now and plan for the siege. A vile force of darkness has arrived.

Figure 27

[bp920091]

Looks like a fun fort,

Dwarf me as the manager (or bookkeeper, if you don't have a manager/he its already taken)


Bp920091 for the name

As for the vampire, find the dwarf that has WAY too many friends/previous associations, then lock them in a room for about 6-8 months (floodgate door). If the dwarf gets hungry, you grabbed the wrong one. If they don't get hungry/thirsty, congratulations, you have caught the vampire. use him as a ”battery backup” if all else fails for the forty