Hello fellow strikers of the earth.
So I say I'm new but I've been lurking around these forums for a short while, picking up tidbits of information while puzzling through this complex masterpiece. I've finally reached a point where I'm pretty comfortable with setting up the basic fortress, and there are just one or two industries I need to dig into before I look at more complex issues such as mine carts and power.
However even more exciting for me is that I have my very first anecdote to share. So I hope this amuses you all as much as it amused (and slightly sickened) me:
So I have a booming fortress set up. Its the first time I've properly ploughed into the metal industry, and steel production is in full swing. My Fortress is pretty secure with the entrance dug down into flatland with a square mudstone fortress surrounding it (Classy!), an archery tower and a 2 wide, 2-z Level pit around the perimeter, with a bridge allowing access to the surroundings. North of this I have a channeled route that takes any passing trade caravans into the safety of the earth. This is secured (pretty commonly I suspect) by another pair of bridges; the outer is left open to accept the caravans, with the inner being closed so no nasties sneak into my fort. Then of course the air lock is flipped, securing the traders away into the tender mercies of the
Scorching Irons of fort
SpiralSteppes.
So this is where the brief tale begins. I quickly realised only a mere handful of years into the fort's life that the water in my surrounding region freezes towards the end of autumn and stays that way until mid spring. It was also at this point that I came to the conclusion that I was missing a well, with my thought process looking a little like this:
"Wow! Good job I spotted that. If those 15 dorfs hadn't been killed outright by that Forgotten Beast Harrier I'd really be in trouble right now." (This a somewhat unrelated event whereby a flying forgotten beast slipped into the top of my tower. As it happens a downward stairway allows movement diagonally past a wall placed directly beneath. Who knew?"
Now there was no decent surface water available in my region, so the natural choice was to dig down to the cavern layers and create a cistern and pump a load of water into it. This created !FUN! with my lack of knowledge surrounding the workings of pump stacks, but again I won't relate that here. In creating the cistern what I accidentally achieved was to create a practically floating island of rock, with everything beneath it being channeled out.
"Well that's no problem, I'll just carefully chip around the edges and work my way into the centre..." *CRUNCH!!!!* (followed near instantly by a self derogatory expletive and a face palm)
Now as it happens my miners there are the toughest little dorfs known to dorf kind. Despite being sent crashing through 5 Z-levels with a few tonnes of rock, both of my miners survive with one being totally unscathed and the other just having a somewhat bruised left upper leg. I was giving thanks to Armok when it dawned on me they'd actually crashed through into the cavern layer, all but on top of a pack of trolls. Ah...
Now I'm going to tell you that both miners, through divine will, actually managed to survive. However I think its worth emphasizing at this point how distracted I was attending to the health of my dwarfs. So when a human caravan comes along practically right after this event, I do more than my usual dwarvenly grumbling and cursing and waste no time offhandedly instructing my dorfs to pull both trade bridge levers so I can get back to more important matters, by Armok!
Very shortly after... this happens:
At this point I actually exclaimed out loud,
"WHAT THE FLYING F**K?!?!" (which in hindsight was extremely appropriate, considering that's exactly what seemed to be bludgeoning the human merchant to death.)
Was it a curse?! Was it some sort of magical enchantment I had no idea existed in the game?! Had a passing sorcerer doomed my fortress with enchanted sentient caravan goods?!
Then it dawned on me - I'd pulled the levers too early. Our poor human merchant was minding her own business, marveling at the wonders of my underground realm on her way to the depot when the bridge she was standing on suddenly raised at near super sonic speeds, thus sending her rocketing towards the ceiling. Now I can't say exactly what would have gone through her mind as she hurtled upwards, only to crash against and rebound from the rock above, but had she not been utterly stunned she might have been aware that she was much lighter than the majority of the other goods on the cart...
And so as she was coming down, she met everything else coming up. Including the squids she'd quite clearly wronged earlier in her short life.
And that's how I found her, lying dead beneath the now raised bridge with a caravan guard standing over her in frozen horror, items and trade goods strewn all around.
I'll be perfectly honest - this was the moment I panicked. They were trapped in my fortress, and I'd just accidentally and horrifically killed one of my human allies! I scrambled for the levers, commanding my dorfs, in what amounted to a high pitched squeak, to lower the bridge and let the humans go!
Swiftly I returned to the trade depot, hoping at the very least I could salvage my relations with the human empi...
*SPLAT!!!!*It took me a moment of staring blankly at the screen, at the blood spatter running from under the bridge in the vague direction of the now missing caravan guard to work out what I'd just done. I didn't begrudge the other humans for running away screaming as if demons from hell were behind them. I probably would have done as well in that situation.
Quietly I receded into the background, resolving that I'd learned what I wanted to in this particular fortress and that I would return later... maybe - Retired.
So there you have it! Never game while tired, don't panic and always carry your towel. Oh! And squid are the most vengeful creatures under the sun or earth.
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Topic: So I'm new! And this happened... (Read 1653 times)