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[edgefigaro]

I don't think I would do the cave-in method if only because it would leave an ugly scar on my landscape.  Instead I'm leaning toward a vertical stairway going down two z-levels, then a horizontal hallway 2 urists long, then a big room, and just carry everything in by hand.  Dwarves unload stuff quickly enough almost every time.  For the 10-20% of the times they get killed by something before unloading is finished, just back up the savefile and do it again.

I like clean architecture.  Later on almost that whole dirt layer will be mined out for a tree farm, so the shape of the inital room doesn't matter.  The staircase will be re-purposed as the central stair of an archer tower and/or emergency fortress exit.

As an alternative I have thought of maybe constructing a simple 5x5 box around the wagon, with a roof, deconstruct the wagon and then dig straight down.  That might be even faster than your cave-in method.  If my calculations are correct it should take 29 logs: 20 for the 5x5 wall and 9 for the 3x3 roof.

Yeah, I like my cave-in, and I often like my architecture to resembled haphazard blights and scars of impulse and industry rather than elegant and well thought out constructions. Especially in evil terrain. Doubtlessly there are other approaches that work. I generally prefer to take stone and make blocks for building (1 stone makes 4 blocks, so you save on some embark points. Also, you need a couple of stairs, so thats 31 logs.

Strictly the safest technique is likely to instantly dig a small hole and wall it off with all your dwarves inside. Maybe transport your seeds in. You can cavein the wagon with a single miner secluded from below.

Begs the question, does falling terrain through the emptyness a raised bridge deconstruct the bridge?

Time for SCIENCE!

Update:
Just tested, falling terrain does in fact destroy raised bridges.

[Larix]

For a box, you just need 25 building material:
Two full walls of five each, two walls of three each to fill up, nine for the roof. For roof access, build a ramp instead of one of the wall grids first, once the roof's done, deconstruct the ramp and replace it with the wall. 5x5 box made of 25 logs.

[joeclark77]

For a box, you just need 25 building material:
Two full walls of five each, two walls of three each to fill up, nine for the roof. For roof access, build a ramp instead of one of the wall grids first, once the roof's done, deconstruct the ramp and replace it with the wall. 5x5 box made of 25 logs.

Yeah, I did the math wrong.  25 does it.

[MoridinUK]

Chapter 2: To 252 A whole year

Well, it aint Sewer Beer but it is a whole new year!!!  Hahahahaha...   Well they said we couldn't do it!  They said we were mad, well madder than them, they said other stuff too, stuff that I can't remember now...

Well RASPPPP to you, here we are!  12 months in, all alive, and I mean in the non-undeady-reanimated way!  The chicks have hatched, the quarry leaf stews are becoming masterpieces!  We are still here!!!

I suppose I'd better add some more detail than just this!  Opps apologies for the Dwarven Ale stains...

Well there's the small reactor thingy, oh yes, we built that mainly to turn the millstone, so much easier than making one of these crazies migrants do the work.  Also I think we did it just to make the darn aquifer useful!  It is of no other use at all, sigh... it gets in the way here, there and everywhere!  Bah! IF there is anything I think is more useless than sand, it is sand full of water...

Tee hee, the reactor construction was fun though!  We ran out of wood part way through and you should have seen the look on Obok's face when I shoved the axe in her hand and unlocked the floor hatch to the surface.  We had so much fun timing how quickly she could chop and haul wood! 

I also started to plan out what to do with our rubbish, we have no refuse stockpile, and so I came up with a clever plan, no no not inspired by a bad brew of ale at all!  I was given a heavenly vision, yes yes it was after drinking from that odd smelling ale but what does that have to do with anything?, I was given a heavenly vision that if we collapsed part of the landscape and then floored over the top it would be as though the area was both underground and above it!

This plan hasn't gone so well, the cave in was awesome, but no one was hurt, and the roof went on fine, but now I'm not sure I have come up with some cool floor hatch, airlock system. You never know when you might need an air lock and I've no idea what may reanimate.. actually I've no idea if anything reanimates here!  Nothing has died yet.. hahahahahaha

Right then, other than that, we have a tonne of silver nuggets, but no fuel or trees.  I've set the miners to dig for Magma!!! And I have another insanely fiendish clever idea for getting the silver all the way down there easily enough.  I'm hoping that once smelted and made into something they may not be so heavy! 

We still haven't completed the airlock for the trade depot.  Tunnels are being run out to the nearest roads and will be set to open once they are complete.  But the miners complain of damp rock here and there and well everywhere, these tunnels take some very odd routes. 

The farming industry is now pretty crazy but food is a little tight until the hens give us some more eggs.  We mill the cave wheat, and probably some sugar pods when we have them, but I forbid cooking with Plump Helmets.  I mean after all they are all so juicy when raw, how could you improve on that!

I'm also very worried about the weaver, she is a little crazy, when ever I open the hatchway to the surface, to you know grab a tree, or attempt to build bits of a surface airlock, she runs off crying 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' and starts collecting phantom spider web! 

I must make this stop!

I want to be the only person sending people on crazy missions!

ah any other worthwhile things to mention?  Oh yes, we have invented a new sport, it's call migrant running!  Each time migrants arrive we see how long we dare watch them being chased by the horrifyingly twisted pervesion of nature we call the local wildunlife, before letting them in the hatch!  So far 6 insane? Criminals? new members of our community have arrived, all without so much as a twitching reanimated finger.  One moron actually felt so confident he brought his pet duck with him!  Their skills include Wood cutting, masonry, cooking, animal training and Blacksmithing!

Really need to find some fuel or even some useful, rather than pretty metal!  Gulp!

We also had a diplomat arrive, his caravan skipped past unable to find a route to the trade depot they said, I still thought they could have tried harder.  I sold him most of our weapons, which none of us know how to use and are just lying around, tempting us to try to cut bits off things.  This is probably not a good idea.   We bought some more seed, but couldn't afford even one more pick.  If these had been Elves I know what I would have done.. hehehehe...

So the next tasks, find magma, make silver things to trade, finish caravan tunnels, build proper migrant airlocks, dig out bigger better tree farm, dig out some proper accommodation, maybe build crazy quick silver transporter!  And they said we wouldn't make a home here!  Oh I guess I ought to work out if things reanimate here! But as all the surface plants appear to be dead too, I do think it is safe to assume, or unsafe to assume, oh you know what I mean!

They make a lovely sight all those dead eyeballs and worm tendrils, swaying in the breeze!  I'm really starting to like it here!

Spoiler: z-0 The surface complete with cave in scar (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: z-1 The main area (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: z-2 The depot and lower part of reactor (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: z-2 The whole map (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: z-3 Tunnels (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: z-4 Tunnels (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: z-5 You guessed it more caravan tunnels! (click to show/hide)

[joeclark77]

Have you butchered any animals?  If the skin or hair didn't re-animate, then lucky you, you're not on a re-animating biome.
Very neat that you have phantom spiders.

[MoridinUK]

I have the web, I assume i have the spiders but they aren't listed anywhere!  I'll need a plan to trap them and get some guy training up on trapping.

Migrants are dribbling in in 3s so not sure what my chances are of getting a good trapper!

Really need some advice, what can and can't reanimate?

If I butcher an animal, I get meat, organs, skin, hair, bones, teeth.  Do all of these reanimate or not?  I understand skin and hair does...  I need to step up some butchering if I want to bait traps for phantom spiders! 

At the moment, my dwarfs are all veggies for obvious reasons! 

[joeclark77]

I have the web, I assume i have the spiders but they aren't listed anywhere!  I'll need a plan to trap them and get some guy training up on trapping.

Migrants are dribbling in in 3s so not sure what my chances are of getting a good trapper!

Really need some advice, what can and can't reanimate?

If I butcher an animal, I get meat, organs, skin, hair, bones, teeth.  Do all of these reanimate or not?  I understand skin and hair does...  I need to step up some butchering if I want to bait traps for phantom spiders! 

At the moment, my dwarfs are all veggies for obvious reasons! 

The prepared meats and tanned hides do not reanimate.  Some of the "refuse" parts like hair and skin can reanimate.  They aren't extremely dangerous but they will frighten your dwarves.  If you have gone a whole  year, I assume that you either butchered your pack animals or they died of starvation.  So if you didn't have their corpses or their hair/skin raise from the dead, you don't have a re-animating biome.

If they are still alive, I suggest pasturing them in a small room with a lockable door and a butcher/tanner shop.  Have your least favorite migrant go in and slaughter them.  If they re-animate, lock the door.  I'm really not sure what's the best way to handle a re-animating biome.  Many people use atom-smashers but it feels like an exploit to me.  I would consider dumping refuse and corpses into a pit with no stairs or ramps out of it... that'll confine all but the flying zombies.  Cage traps will also help control the living dead, but may not work on zombies who were once your citizens, and won't work on kobolds, raccoons, etc.  Magma can be used to destroy the dead bodies but will not kill them if they are animated.  Obsidian generators or cave-ins will kill anything.

If you have an embark that straddles two or more biomes, one of them may be non-reanimating, and it's safe to keep animals, refuse piles, and butcher shops in that biome.

[MoridinUK]

So does the biome reanimate?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

[joeclark77]

Good luck!

[MoridinUK]

Chapter 3: 252-253
The struggle to achieve anything...   

I really should get to updating this more often, write up as you go along, my old supervisor used to say!  I didn't listen then and seems I'm not know oh well.

Another year has passed and we are still good!  If we count run about like people fleeing a burning building, only that the building is our fort and even on fire is still safer than the dreaded outside!

Most of the year was spent trying to build a set of caravan entrances to allow trading.  As we have still found no useful metal ore this is of great importance, trade could be our only access to metal!  A forest haunted by zombie animals was hardly a place to send a prospector ahead of us!

These entrances where to run to the map edges to allow any caravans to get under ground quickly, however, it was proving so difficult to maneuver around aquifers and ponds that I ordered only one built!  It was to focus on one part of the map and provide a completely cut off route to the edge of our claim!  I don't care what happens to the crazy intrepid traders after that but their visits are too important to risk!

Sadly a caravan arrived before this was complete and we could only trade for the goods the individuals were carrying!  But I'm getting a head of myself!

The first caravan to arrive was the pointed eared, ecco freaks!  I had several nightmares just before they arrived, of them getting trapped, going mad and eventually turning to zombies!  This spurned us all on to great works!  As the only entrance to the fort was via a single, floor hatch, not even airlocked!

The merchants make it in! However, one of the last wave of idiots migrants had been killed on their way in and so I ordered the hatch sealed.

I bought all the wood and seeds I could from the pointy ears, in return for just one pot of prepared food!  Hehe, They are crazy! I then set the chippy to building cages and the mech to building cage traps.  Once they were ready I let in the Zombie, we all hid in the butchery until we heard the far away click of a cage falling!  Hurrah!  The merchants could then leave!

The memorial to the fallen migrant was engraved and then we had a couple of moods, using some wood from the pointy ears, which made me smile, I set up a makeshift meta lworks to produce the bars for the moody dwarfs! 

Manthulbetan Shar Kakdal, Deviancecalm the Mile of Brims was born!  A native silver bracelet!

Which was also followed by

Itatsumun Gorrothetost, Chilledgriffon the Disemboweled Container! A native silver weapon rack!

The single caravan route was not ready when the Dwarven caravan arrived.  The wagon didn't turn up!

The merchants made their way inside and that is when the problems started.  I redirected the caravan route once again!  This time to stay on stone as much as possible to reduce the number of roads needed to keep the trees down!  Because the route moves us and down to avoid the accursed beautiful aquifer, once I started removing the walls behind the old ramps the merchants couldn't find their way out!

I bought all the merchants picks, metal and food/drink.  Sold them a Silver Spiked Ball!  They loved it! Mwhahahahaha..

However, disaster struck!  The merchants went berserk, and even though we were yelling STOP the caravan guards easily killed both the Dwarf and the crazy horse!  The other merchant fell into melancholy as his friend turned into a brain demanding, decomposing horror!

My brave dwarfs quickly grabbed the corpse and dragged it to the atom smasher on the surface.  This was then operated!  The horse's corpse was then being dragged up there too when it came back to life, the cowardly sensible dwarf dragging the rotting corpse, ran for the wind rather than pulling the atom smasher's lever!  So there is now a reanimated horse corpse in the atom shasher room on the surface, held back only by a floor hatch!  I have now ordered a new atom smasher built near to the trade depot after all that is where all the trouble always happens!

My brave dwarfs, went to work sealing the melancholy dwarf up in a room of his own, it has a single cage trap in there but I doubt he'll walk into it.  As a nice measure I had the walls engraved into fortifications so our visitor can see us all!  We hoped he'd cheer up, but instead he starved, so we now have a wonderful marksdwarf training gallery!   It is just a pity that the dwarfs will be forced to shoot at a twisted version of their own kind.

Another migrant dies!  This one ran off to go fishing when I tried to let the merchants out!  I let the zombie in and the cage traps take it! 

However, another set of migrants utter idiots have arrived 35 in total!  However, they again have chosen to arrive near a herd of zombie boars and a zombie cavvy sow is living just outside our floor hatch!  I've no idea how to get them inside!

All this just as I was beginning to plan to move us into a proper healthy stone environment.  The tree farm has been enlarged too but now I have to save these migrants and build more migrant entrances!  I've no idea if the caravan entrance will work!  I hope so!

At some point we also need to breach the magma sea!  We need fuel, wood wont work forever!

All in all, two years in and only four/five deaths, two of them being merchants!  I count that as a great start!

However it is so annoying that we get interrupted all the time and can never achieve anything that we have planned!!! Such is life as a Slave to Armok! 

Any requests for screen caps?

[MoridinUK]

Chapter 4: The End?

The sun rose on the dead grasses and shrubs.  Another spring in this place forsaken by all the Gods who hold beer, sky, sun and reproduction dear!  Fortress life continues, the prepared food, and silver spiked balls are ready for the next merchants.  There is enough food and drink and the miners are both clearing a forest hall and delving to the magma.  We have a fully workable wagon route, and a couple of migrant entrances via floor hatches.

The future is looking bright!

The mystical look outs announced the arrival of an Elven caravan!  Sadly not using the safe wagon route!  The floor hatches were opened and for once no idiots ran outside to greet the undead!  I think they finally got the message that upstairs is forbidden as are any dropped items up there! 

How foolish was I to think a bunch of over-sensitive dwarfs ever had a future!

2 out of 3 Elves and their camels made it to the fortress, the other was fleeing an undead buffalo, heading straight for safety and then turned away at the last moment, in a flash of panic striken insanity.

We were ready to slam the hatch shut behind him, but no.  He ran about screaming as the buffalo slowly stomped his camel and then him into the ground. 

As news spread through the fortress, the other Merchants immediately packed up their things and left!  Only one made it to the edge of the map, they both refused to use the safe route!!

Well that hardly bothered us anyway, we all thought they looks were much improved once the points on their ears had rotten away!!

As summer approached, we hoped to see a human caravan, it is now confirmed, there is no useful metal in this earth, and there were no iron ores available from our home either!  Humans are our only hope!

We heard a great commotion and ran to see what was about, had the caravan arrived at last?

No, we looked with horror upon a small hoard of goblin bowmen with their Jabber along for the ride!  They ran about stomping the undead wildlife, that was until they ran out of ammo! 

So now there is not only undead animals on our door step but also an undead goblin siege!

If the Humans or Dwarfs merchants were coming this year, they stayed away due to the siege! 

Migrants soon arrived but they managed to get underground.  A crazy number of idiots tried to run after the dropped items from the Elven caravan but with an emergency alert we managed to get them all unground again!

We were just starting to feel a little smug, we had a population of about 165, all fed, drunk and many working.  I hoped the next year we could make good progress on moving industry and home deeper into the mountain.  We had found the magma and from their could start a good earthware and glass industry! 
As well as our Silver of course!

Oh no, oh no...

"Help, Help! Run like the wind"

The screams rang around our halls, a buffalo calf had starved to death.  With 50-60 idle dwarf's no one thought to feed it or move it to a bigger pasture!

I ordered everyone with any skill as a marksdwarf, macedwarfs or Hammerers into 3 military squads.  They grabbed what weapons we had, all flat ones, and smashed the poor beast back into death.  Its corpse was soon atomsmashed and after setting up a larger pasture, I ordered most of the adult and hungry grazing animals to be slaughtered one by one in our air-locked butchery.

However, despite fighting the undead, despite all these problems in the end it was the normal dwarf over-sensitivity that ended us.

The weaver, with us since the 2 wave and so known to many, was possessed by some terrible spirit.  "Color Rough" he raged from inside the clothes shop he stole.

"There's a dwarf who seriously needs some Dye"
"Just so long as he doesn't Die that's fine"

Oh how we joked!  Oh what idiots.

"Dye? no problem we have some dimple cups, lets get them milled"
"Sir, it's the Miller here, I don't seem to be able to find any unrotten stuff to Mill sir"
"What really?  How odd, but ok, well set up a stockpile of dimple cups right next to the Mill, set it to feed the mill!  There that should do it!"
"Sir, it's the Miller here, I don't seem to be able to find any unrotten stuff to Mill sir"
"Ok you are joking right? They are right there, by your feet?"
"Sir, it's the Miller here, I don't seem to be able to find any unrotten stuff to Mill sir"
"Ok, Ok, plant the blasted things and hope they grow fast.."
"Sir we have harvested fresh dimple cups!"
"Awesome, Miller you know what to do!"
"Sir, it's the Miller here, I don't seem to be able to find any unrotten stuff to Mill sir"
"Sir, it's the Miller here, I don't seem to be able to find any unrotten stuff to Mill sir"
"Sir, it's the Miller here, I don't seem to be able to find any unrotten stuff to Mill sir"

"GOD B*ASGSBEGU£&$H£&&££^£&£"

*cough cough*

It was more than the poor possessed weaver could take, he broke, went nuts and started attacking his friends around him.

I had no choice he was in the middle of our all-on-one-floor-open-planed fort.  I ordered the Military to put him down and hope that we don't get too many others getting really upset.

The weaver dies, his body set to be dumped.  I've already got the engraver sorting out a memorial.  One no seems very upset.  I think we are going to be ok.

The body was smashed before it reanimated Hurrah, Crisis over..........

"Argh help.. run for your lives........."

A fisher dwarf (I hate fisher dwarfs) was badly injured on the way in with the 1st migrant wave.  He was being treated in our makeshift hospital.  It seems he has died and again no one tells me before he reanimated!  And I told the chief medical dwarf to keep me up todate on his progress!

"Help me.......... gurlgeddddd......" He just tore a farmer to shreads.

Right farmers body to dump, military to stomp on zombie!  The zombie is down with no more injuries!  Hurrah!

The zombie corpse is taken to the Butchery's atomsmasher as it is so much closer.   Boom! big smiles, the bridge is reset and the farmers corpse is dump there.  However, the butchery is in use, culling some of our grazers.

We pull the lever on the smasher, with smile alround we think we have contained another problem, but no.  As we all grin at each other, the highly popular spinner, with her beautiful baby girl, take a step towards the fallen corpse.  The lever had already been pulled. In that instant between pulling and the bridge dropping the insane women steps up to the corpse and smash.  All three, Woman, dead farmer, baby gone...

The Husband went berserk first, and the military had to put him down twice before his body was smashed.  The Mayor at the time went mad and we sealed him in his own rooms.

The decent spread from there.   I had a room hollowed out, a barrow set and sent the miserable ones there, hoping to seal them in and let them out if they cheer up!  There was water and food in there.  SO they weren't sentences to death, but they mostly refused to go there.

Some started murdering our chickens, which was harsh as they really hadn't done anything, and then more went melancholic or berserk.

About a third of the fort is utterly miserable, more get down every passing moment.  Our only production floor is plagued by 3 melancolies and an insane guy.  The military is down to just 3 dwarfs who still respond to commands.  It is all over. If the blasted aqufier weren't under us, we could move down a level or two seal off the madness and restart with just the few cheerful ones.  But we can't.

This place seems doomed not, and all because of an idiot woman and her baby.  The dead rise so quickly there is no way to deal with the problems, no way to cheer anyone up between bouts of terrifying fear!

As I write this there is so little hope but I will order us deeper into the ground and seal us in.  We 'happy' few will have to work this all out.  If I can find food down there there is hope.  Maybe it is time to brave those caverns...

[Ruhn]

Bad luck with that smasher accident.  Some locked doors could be added?

[MoridinUK]

This will be my last entry, I doubt anyone will come to find it but I leave it anyway.

I tried to save us, but it was too late.  I ordered those of us not struck by misery to grab a few seeds, and anvil, and some picks and move into the mountain.  I sealed off the upper sections and started to build a farm.  We had some crops growing, but the Floor Hatches couldn't prevent the spread of misery.

We could still hear the screams and cries of our fellows as they slowly all gave way to undeath.  The military tried to hold it at bay, but there was no recovery to be had.

3 of our number, in the underhalls, fell to melancholy and finally one went berserk.  One of the melancholy ones gave in to madness and opened the floor hatch to the upperhalls.  I ordered the aquifer breached to slow down the zombies, but they came on.

We are sealed in with a little food and beer, but we do not have the strength to go on.  We have fallen.

Armok forgive us and carry our souls to peace, as our bodies will certainly know none!