i seem to have found a very awesome mountain for my fortress. my wagon came to a rest beside a hillside of dolomite stone, just east of red sand and just north of a brook. It was mountain country, but low hills for the most part and only half forested.
beneath the red sand, what there was of it, was dolomite, or marble to the southeast. Coal, iron, and gems were clearly visible in many a hillside, with a thick vein of magnetite right by my wagon. However there was considerable danger as well, for a stones throw across the river was a cave pool open to the sky, and it held many creatures. a giant toad roamed close enough to endager us until our woodcutter took her axe to it.
we struck the earth, digging due north far enough to get past a cleft in the hillside, before striking west toward the sand. first we opened up four large rooms within the red sand, two for farming, one for food, and a third as a meeting room. beyond this the many workshops spread west into the sandy hillside. at the point where our first shaft into the hill turned west, we dug a shaft straight down to the heart of the mountain, past gabbro and into granite.
our first problem was a stone shortage- we dug the sand too fast, and ran short of the rock we needed. chambers of the lowest granite were excavated quickly for extra building materials. We had a well in the hillside soon enough, with iron bars and a floodgate on a lever to secure the brook-side of it. we dug a second shaft into the depths, further away from the main entrance, and started digging out the living quarters just below, and the tombs two levels below that.
soon all was well, our depot welcomed caravans as the trees were sparse and did not obstruct wagons. early trade was meager, but soon we had enough rock crafts. the first real problem was my own demand for nickle. i knew we had gabbro, and once my first mandate as mayor was made, i joined the lads in a search the the gabbro levels, expanding our search for the metal ore.
we did not find the nickel in time, and for my failure one of our dwarves went to prison. this was perhaps the real reason why those two marksdwarves have been alternating in the office since then... they were migrant hunters both of em.
in my search for nickel, we found something infinetely more precious. Adamantium! a vein was struck due north of the mineshaft on one of the middle layers. we dug about, revealing a small section of the raw stuff. soon after we had the arrival of a dungeonmaster, and later our Queen, Bellsflashed, flashed us all as she arrived naked... we had no baron yet, so we gave her the engraved room we were preparing for the other noble as we expanded our digging. once we installed an artifact cabinet she was at last happy with her three rooms.
not long after, another shaft on the same level hit a chasm. twas nothing in it, but the riches there were obvious. we dig a staircase up and down, and started going after the ore and gems visible in the sheer sides of the chasm. not long after, cave spider webs began to show up on the ledges we made, making our weavers and clothiers very happy indeed.
in recent time, we have found a second chasm, a larger one filled with unpleasant critters. but our marksdwarves made short work of most of em, killing all the troglodytes on the upper level. we had a cave swallowman chase a weaver out, and it got caunt in the cage, but the batman behind it we had to send troops to kill. at this point only the one cave swallowman remains, flying about the chamber.
we have been seiged by goblins and trolls. when the trolls came, they destroyed our Depot, but we had already begun work on a second depot, at another entrance that was better defended. the trolls entered our fortified walls, and went into the hallway of death. they made it rather far, about 15 traps in all before the trolls were dead and the goblins fled, an alternating series of weapons and stonefalls. the hall was 18 traps long, before an iron door. after this, we sealed the mineshaft on that end, opening it up a bit further in and away from the entrance.
after seeing the dreadful behavior of many to rush into the breach... the nobility wanted to clean the traps! tax collector, hammerer, queen, and count consort, all rushed toward the door. we dug the courtyard above that hall, and installed a green glass skylight. in addition to being magnificent, it keeps the lads a bit safer from the sieges as we lure the idiot goblins to their doom.
since then.. well, our current mayor likes crystal glass. his first term, he had the hammerer strike a glassmaker once, mangling the poor dwarfs arm. he has since healed and returned to work thankfully. our duke consort likes black bronze, and for this a guard was struck three times for our lack of the gold to make it, later dying in bed with two mangled limbs, too unconsius to take food or water.
we stock brass and black bronze of necessity now, to meet noble demands. I remain the broker and manager, though a have passed teh duties of bookeeping to a promising your peasant. her efforts have proved nothing short of legendary, and it gives me more time to bother these two twits that took my job of mayor about mining jobs. at the moment we have another mandate for crystal glass, just after one womans daughter, full grown, has gone mad and fallen to meloncoly for she could find no rock crystal to complete an artifact once she became possessed.
We have a nice waterfall over the main entrance now, though it seems a lot weaker than what i envisioned... two pumps powered by windmill, running from a tunnel to the river, pump water up to a chamber over the second part of the entryway, where there are six grates. the six grates below run a tunnel to the chasm, where the water cascades down into the depths far below.
the elves are yelling about the trees now. the first time, we agreed to only cut 73 trees that year. but their last two demands were closer to 50, which we refused. we have had to travel further afield of late to mine more coal, as the closer veins of coal and lignite have been smelted to coke. which of course means we need more wood for charcoal.
we have a pet dragon, thanks to our cage traps, as well as a giant olm. a bear and a cougar we got from the elves. we breed donkeys, horses, cows, and groundhogs for leather and meat, and have just started a breeding population of rhesus marques. the dogs seem to have stopped breeding though, despide teh addition of new specimens from caravans, which is troubling. did we train too many?
a recent project, we have flooded a large chamber over the eastern chasm, and drained it. tower-caps have already begun to grow. to the west, our trade depot now has a road, and a wall north and south of the road acts to force anything from the west to come through the road. the northern section isnt done yet, but its getting there. theres enough cliffs about for it to work.
its becoming a challenge, to find room to store our vast wealth and house our growing population. to meet demand, we had to build more stills lest beer be scarcer than dwarf. the stockpiles keep growing, and new rooms are designated to hold food.
we have 20 shops at the moment, 5 of each type. some are dolomite or talk, but some are made of more colorful rock, or in one case glass! the glass furnace is making green glass blocks nonstop now. we have so much bone, that we have four stations to craft it now- one to crossbows and three to bolts. totems are being made from the skulls. rock is being made exclusively into instruments now, as our duchess often demands trumpets, which now fill the floor of her rooms.
we have 3 champions, two legendary hamemrs and a legendary wrestler who also uses a hammer.. that lad was originaly a gaurd, but he always brought his crossbow in to spar! so we let him do what hes good at. Sadly, the hammers broke the bodies of two of our gaurds before we took safer measures for sparring... each of those gaurds lost a lung, and one has spine damage, though both have healed their broken ribs. chain mail and hammers do not mix!
we have one axelord, but the other axedwarf died in training. a sad event really. also in our tombs, two dwarves caught by goblin ambush and two merchant sworddwarves who gave their lives defending the arrival of a caravan.
so here we are, two-hundred strong with a military of fifty dwarves, 30 of those in the guard. we boast 23 marksdwarves now, and we shall need to rotate the guard assignments soon at this rate. i feel we shall need a larger army though, if my fears of what lies beneath us are true. but with the adamantium we have now, we can certainly equip a few squads of dwarven heroes. it just needs to be processed, and then we can decide on its use.
our above-ground walls grow, as do the traps that make a deathtrap of our courtyard. each siege turns tail further out as they learn what we can do. soon we shall have a section walled off, for above-ground farming. we hope to add to our production of cloth thread and brewable berries, perhaps new dyes as well.
hmm.. thats about it. our first artifact was a perfect gem, made by a possessed migrant jeweler. all these gems everywhere, even emeralds.. and no rock crystal to save the lives of my dwarves from the power-mad.
Tosid Abodavus 'Strickenmine', legendary miner/appraiser/record keeper, expedition leader and once they mayor of this fine metropolis. two and a half million in goods we have crafted thus far, our only crime is the unreasonable demands of nobility. our dwarves are ecstatic, and content even in death.
The Walled Cult-Books of Blocking, Adilngotunthikut Rifet.
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Topic: Packstandards, home of The Dead Sabres (Read 2690 times)