Hoooo Boy! This is gonna be a bit of a long one, with plenty of disasters and mishaps on my part, sadly.
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Early Summer, 259Some months have passed since my last entry here, and work continues apace on clearing the caverns and establishing defensive measures. It seems a bone carver has made a new construction, though!
How nice of him! Yet, as the summer wears on, it quickly becomes apparent that the caverns are NOT safe. More invaders flood in, a seething tide of flesh and dwarf-hating bone. Thankfully, the military beats them off with one one civilian casualty.
Left with little other option due to the invaders' continued use of ravenous cave crawlers, I've order four great bridges to be constructed that we might have ready defenses and not be overrun by rabble from below. Meanwhile, I've also turned the old forge spaces into a massive stone stockpile, and carved larger spaces for our finished goods.
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Late Summer, 259Calamity! My fears of yesteryear have come true! A horror from the deeps has slithered up through the well and assailed us! The beast was slain, but not without cost.
Vulnerable as the well might be, a better option eludes me due to the lack of a larger reservoir and the freezing of the river in the winter. The season turns, and those blasted cavern dwellers return! Once more they are driven back in a blizzard of blood and screams, but the problem persists. The bridges and levers are finished, so I've ordered the bridges to be raised and raised I shall leave them. No more shall we be troubled by savages in the deep.
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Mid Winter, 259The magma forges are almost finished being rebuilt, and a runner informs me that a great beast (Yet another one) was sighted in the second cavern layer. I wish the abomination the best of luck in wandering the underground sea.
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Late Winter, 259MORE FUCKING WEREGIRAFFES. Didn't we do this already?
The accursed thing is slain with only the loss of a poet, but it bites several people, who are all fairly useless to the fort and thence expelled. In Mid-Summer of 260, however, one of them, a Fishery Worker, returns to wreak havoc, just as a caravan is leaving.
Again, we triumph, but the merchants suffer several losses. Sometime later, an assistant brings me a jug of the first mead we have produced here in Treedoom! Not much later, the envoy from the Mountainhomes arrives and informs me that we've been made a duchy!
What's this, a strange mood? Delightful, perhaps you'll make something...completely fucking useless.
Seeing holes in the lawn leading down into the weregiraffe daycare give me the idea to attempt to flood said daycare, which I duly attempt. Said attempt...does not work out as well as might be hoped. One weregiraffe escapes right on the full moon and kills three civilians before being struck down. The other does not escape until later, when they are a more amiable dwarf. Thanks to a quick notification by a guard, I quickly order our erstwhile leader expelled.
Throughout this long summer, I've also overseen a mass slaughter of our overblown dog and cat population, and expansion of the food stores as appropriate. The outdoor food garden has also been appropriately revamped to account for those plants we DO have seeds for. In the old crafter's hall, I've restored our soapmaking industry, built two bowyers, and a siege workshop. As another gift to my successor, I have found the true wealth that will be the foundation of our war efforts here: Bone crafts! We have no shortage of bones and various bits from the unending stream of critters we've slain in the depths, or butchered from our own stocks. One particularly noteworthy bin that was sold for the entire contents of the last dwarven caravan (Plus or minus a few toys and splints and such) was 407 objects, with an estimated worth of well over $10,000! Talk about turning trash into treasure!
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Autumn, 260The fortress appears to be doing very well, perhaps the best so far since the initial weregiraffe attacks of 253! With that in mind, I launch multiple assaults against the nearby goblin fortress, all meeting with great success, and returning with several beak dogs and other assorted goods. I've had a windmill built in the old garden, and attached several millstones to it to replace our old and laborious querns.
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Winter, 260It appears the goblins do not wish to simply accept our raids laying down. They have come to parley, but rather than a delegation, they appear to be here in numbers enough to siege the gate for many months.
Undeterred, I order the military forward, and an all-out slaughter ensues. In the resulting carnage, the will of the enemy host is decisively broken and the survivors flee for their lives...but the cost to the fort is almost too great to bear. All but two of the axedwarves slain in the field, and only one surviving speardwarf. May Armok forgive my sins and may my successor guide us back to glory...
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Final notes and observations: So the caverns are a lost cause. Write them off, we can't afford to keep handling all the bullshit that keeps spewing out of them. Leave the bridges up, forget about them. There's a forgotten beast sealed in the entry hall of the first cavern, IT IS A WEB SPITTER. There are also some dwarves stuck in cages. They've all gone stark raving mad, don't let them out. Try and see about making us a functional aquifer? That well is giving me nightmares, but we gotta have it.
On the upside, with the military decimated, here's your chance to remake it as needed. Plus, we now have a boyer, so we can make crossbows and have ranged options. Good luck!
https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=17150
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Topic: Treedoom, Bane of Elves! (Succession Fortress, OVERSEERS WANTED) (Read 2068 times)