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[Aseaheru]

Oh, our first FB! So exciting! I'm not there's much more to say about it, though, if it's just chilling in the caverns. I assume the caverns are sealed. Please tell me the caverns are sealed.

Did you get around to making anything with the candy or did you just mine it out?

Slothen, since you're going next can you dwarf me as some random female dwarf, name "Hawk"? Preferably somebody that has a good chance of surviving until my turn.

sure

to what?

[wypie]

Oh, our first FB! So exciting! I'm not there's much more to say about it, though, if it's just chilling in the caverns. I assume the caverns are sealed. Please tell me the caverns are sealed.

Did you get around to making anything with the candy or did you just mine it out?

Slothen, since you're going next can you dwarf me as some random female dwarf, name "Hawk"? Preferably somebody that has a good chance of surviving until my turn.

I just mined it I was gonna make myself some armour but meh.

[slothen]

Slothen update 1.  20th Sandstone, 127, Mid-Autumn

Oh man.  Where to begin...   Well, I might as well start with the good.  It would be too cruel otherwise.

- The fortress is fairly defensible.  There is a ditch and a rough rock wall that surround our entrance to the outside.  In fact, its so defensible, there isn't even an entrance for traders or migrants to enter by.

- There are adequate supplies of food and drink.  Not huge supplies, but enough that it shoring those up won't have to be my immediate concern.  Nothing is more exasperating than taking over management of a new place after a long journey, and being asked if I've brought any rum with me before I've even had a chance to take the tour.

- There is much mineral wealth.  There are rich deposits of iron ores and coal right under our feet.  The cavern walls show rich veins of gold, tetrahedrite, and sphalerite.  Deeper still there is marble.  At the very bottom, there is raw adamantine.  What's more, some has already been carefully mined out and brought closer to the surface.  There is also magma, with a few magma smelters and forges.

- The outside is temperate.  There is a muddy brook, and many plants and trees.

Now, to the bad.  This will be a considerably longer list.

- We have no goddamn entrance!  When I arrived I could see only the rock walls and the ditch.  After walking all around, I saw a break in the wall with the trade depot, but there was no way to cross the ditch to get inside.  I scratched my beard for a moment.  I was then accosted by a muddy looking dwarf with a brook lamprey hanging from his filthy matted beard.  I later found out his name was Deduk, but far from introducing myself, he asked if I had any ale or cheese.  Apparently the poor guy had been trapped out here for weeks.  He'd slept in the grass and mud, drank the muddy brook water, and eaten raw whatever he could fish out with his beard.  He complained that he'd only been able to find mussels for several days, despite absolutely hating them.  He was worried that his wife and five children inside the fortress had written him off by now.  Not wanting to turn out like this guy, I started screaming at the top of my lungs at whatever dwarves must be inside.  I eventually got a response, but it was a few hours before they could find a rope for me to crawl out of the ditch into the walls.  In that time I met another, even scruffier and more miserable dwarf called Doren.  She was in the same predicament as Daduk.  Her husband and child were also inside.  I was even surprised that in weeks of a shared predicament, Daduk and Doren had never even met each other.  They seemed like a perfect match.

- There is no militia to speak of.  One pick-wielding imbecile calls himself militia commander, but he's never even seen a goblin before.  Another by the name of "wypie" marches around with a crude copper crossbow, bragging about how good he his.  He claims to be the captain of the guard, despite having no quiver, no armor, and no jail!  A few dwarves tell me they know their way around some weapons, but there aren't many weapons to speak of, save a single steel mace of the highest quality.  It's known in the fortress as Saramfikuk, "the Great Fields."  I must make it a priority to find a stout and brave dwarf worthy of the deadly weapon.

- Coke.  Coke everywhere.  Knowing that one can never have too much coke, the previous overseer's ordered it smelted forever from the coal deposits running through the fortress.  Literally every goddamn stockpile is filled with coke.  There are huge stockpiles with a bin of leather, maybe a cage or two, a crutch, and then 75 piles of coke.  The great weapon Saramfikuk sits in a room for which there is no purpose but to hold more coke.  What's the point of hauling stuff down a mile of staircases to get to the magma forges, when there's so much goddamn coke we don't know what to do with it right near the surface?  Priorities, people.  Dwarf power is not free, there's an opportunity cost to it.

- Speaking of magma smelters, you can reach them via a cramped tunnel big enough for a single none-too-stout dwarf to walk through.  Fat guys have to squeeze, and if someone else is coming the other way, you end up getting real intimate.   This tiny abhorrent tunnel goes straight down into the earth.  By the time you get to the open room with the magma forges, you're so thirsty and tired you can only swing your pick once or twice before you need a drink and a nap, and so its back up the narrow tunnel again, hoping no one else is coming your way.  Also, the magma forges are built right above the magma sea, with big open chunks of the floor opened up to whatever might crawl out.  Very unsafe.  Here's an idea, since we've got so goddamn much coke, why don't we seal off this death trap down here and do our work closer to the rest of the fort?  Well, at least until we can widen the tunnel properly, put up a barrier between our skilled smiths and the fearsome magma crabs, and construct a crude dormitory and dining room down there.

- Also, while I was on my way back from the magma forges, I heard a voice crying out from a newly constructed section of wall.  By the sounds of it, he'd been taking a nap, avoiding work, when someone build a wall there, trapping him.  Once I get back to the fort, have a drink and a nap, I'll tell someone to let the poor soul out.

- The dining room is packed with children and animals.  And the animals are attacking the children.  I wouldn't bother saying anything, but when I sat down to eat some prepared fish (why do we have 10 farmers, 4 butchers, gobs of food, but everything is raw?) some kid punched a donkey and he landed on my table.  The donkey bit the kid back and started bleeding all over me.  We need a bigger dining room.

- There are 17 bedrooms, and the other 58 of us are taking turns sleeping in the 6 beds in the hospital.  Yuck.

- No well

- Garbage pile with rotten bits of uneaten food and dead lizards and rancid fish right next to the main stairwell, stinking up the place

- Animals and children all over the place, making noise and shitting everywhere.

- Did I mention we don't even have an entrance and dwarves are starving outside?

I've got my work cut out for me.  No wonder this place has gone through 4 overseers in less than 2 years.

[Uronym]

Uronym tells slothen, "There's a bridge, but it is retracted. The lever is on the dining level, if memory serves me right. And you can't downplay the magma forges! We have all that coke for steel! Are you some sort of undercover elf, spying on the dwarves? I don't like the new management here.. Got no sense, he."

[FrankMcFuzz]

Aw hell, I forgot all about DF in my holidays and missed my turn D: Sorry about any inconvenience guys D:

At least it's not dead yet lol.

[slothen]

Uronym, thanks for the advice on the lever.

Slothen update 2.  28th Sandstone, 127, Mid-Autumn

here's some images I uploaded to go with the last post.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Since this fort has enough animals and food and a farm, I'm firing all the fisherdwarves and making them the first militia squad.  Hopefully this will nail two birds with one stone.  The miserable dirty fisherdwarves will become lumberjacks.  Marksdwarves will go in the captain of the guard squad under wypie.

Also, my predecessor seems to have destroyed the staircase leading to the magma forges, and over a dozen dwarves are trapped down there, not just one guy.

Okay, everyone has been rescued from dehydration.  I've slaughtered a bunch of useless animals that were beating up children.  I've redone a few stockpiles, started up some bin production (for all the goddamn piles of coke), and made a few exceptional steel swords and battleaxes so the wood cutters aren't defenseless.  I've also tripled the number of woodcutters and miners.

The outpost liason and a dwarven caravan has arrived.  I don't know if we have any trade goods, but if we don't I'll have our legendary stone crafter trade a raw adamantine mug for their whole cargo, if we need anything.


JESUS FUCKING CHRIST


Autumn of year 2 and there's 75 walking corpses.  They've already surrounded the entire place.  Elf, human, dwarf, and goblin corpses.  The outpost liason doesn't stand a chance, they're already on top of him.  about half a dozen dwarves are outside.  I sound the alarm.

I delay retracting the bridge a few seconds to allow the mayor to make it to safety.  I wait for the bridge to retract, but no one's pulled the lever!  They're all rushing to the magma forges to move stone out of the way, an order I had given earlier.  I quickly cancel that, hoping someone will pull the lever.

The first of the zombies get within sight of the entrance.  Two war dogs and a few of the caravan guards charge out heroically buying us additional time.  It's probably too late for Doren though.  She's hiding in the ditch, pretending to be in a meeting with the mayor, who happens to have run inside long ago.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The bridge retracts with Doren, 2 war dogs, and 4 caravan guards outside.  The dogs die quickly.  The caravan guards dispatch 11 zombies before succumbing to the growing horde around them.  Finally Doren breaks from cover, but is immediately grabbed by a goblin corpse.  She doesn't even swing her axe.

There are at least 45 zombies milling about... staring across the ditch into the courtyard.  They're a short stone's throw from the trade depot.  There will be no trading going on while this siege lasts.

Our hospital is a short building on the surface level.  It houses our well.  There are 5 dehydrated dwarves there, apparently injured by animals in our packed tiny meeting hall.  I've ordered a tunnel to be dug that will allow rescue of these dwarves without interruption by the moaning horde outside.  It will also help since we're low on booze currently.  Scratch that, it is now winter.  The booze situation is under control, but the dehydrated dwarves in the hospital are probably gonners.

I've given some steel crossbows and steel bolts to the fortress guard squad.  In two rounds, they've done a pretty good job thinning out the zombies in front of our fortress.  There's only 15 left.  They're kind of upset about being sent to fight though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've completed a second well in the caverns.  Unfortunately it was too late to save 2 of the dehydrated dwarves in the hospital.  The rest are recieving water, but the guard captain Wypie is very upset about having to give water (he's an SOB).  He's also not happy about not having more than a meager bedroom.  Well, hardly anyone has any rooms, and our dining hall is a few tables carved in a hole in the dirt.  I've only been on the job 2 months, these drunk midgets need to cut me some slack and be happy their drinking booze instead of eating brains, or starved to death down in the forges.  Instead there's quite a few tantrums going on.  I think the intense sad vibes around here can be traced back to that goddamn miniature dining hall.  Regardless, I've ordered the production of some coffins.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We are in a serious tantrum spiral.  Coffins are being filled as fast as possible... dwarves are murdering each other left and right.  Wypie, our captain of the guard, has gone berserk and been struck down.  6 Relatively sane dwarves are armed with well made steel weapons.  Our militia commander wields the legendary mace.  Now is the best chance to finish off the 15 zombies outside our walls.  I go to lower the lever... only to find its been destroyed.  If we have any sane miners left, they will have to open a path to the outside.

The surviving mechants from our fortress burst out and sprint away from our deteriorating fortress.  Two militia fall to the zombies, but the rest are making progress.  One zombie chases the gem setter Tun Ropepaper in circles outside our fortress.  Tun is keeping the dwarf-corpse at range, but suddenly Tun gives birth while running.  She abandons her child, but it looks like the militia commander has come to the rescue!  Unfortunately it isn't the actual militia commander wielding the legendary mace.  That guy is dead.  His backup is the new militia commander, and the dwarf corpse dispatches him instantly.  Tun keeps running.

Finally the last corpse falls, and the siege is lifted.  At this point.. most of the surviving dwarves are insane.  There's a good handful form the most recent migrant wave that are still functional.  Aside from collecting corpses, building coffins, and fixing the bridge with the broken lever, there's not much left to do except wait it out and wait to rebuild.  With all these insane dwarves not eating or drinking, and several caravan members dead, the fort has food and drink to last years.


Spring has come.

A child goes into a secretive mood, then cancels it to have a trantrum then and start a fist fight.  Then goes back to the mood, then goes insane before claiming a workshop.  This kid had tantrumed so much he had novice skill level in thrower and archer.



I technically have like a full year left in my turn >_<.  Still this has been really fun.  Never been sieged by undead, i made some improvements to the fortress that will last even if most of the dwarves die, this is the first large scale tantrum spiral I've ever witnessed in years playing this game.  I think the fort will be okay when more migrants come, and if not it can be reclaimed.  I'll get the save up by the end of the weekend and we can proceed.

Speak of the devil, here are some migrants.

[Darksilverhawk]

Well, that was... eventful. How many functional dorfs do we have left?

[Gigmaster]

OMG, its a fortress of Dwarven Drug Lords!

The tantrum spiral probably started because Slothen's cleaning up of all the stockpiles stopped everyone from sneaking off coke and cutting it into their food.

Oh, and please dorf me when you have the change. Gigmaster/Gigi, make him/her some kind of smith or metalcrafter or bowyer.

[slothen]

updated a duplicated image to the correct one from my last post.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

right as my turn started, we had a migration wave.  That put the fort up to 85.  Now we're at 46 alive (including 3 extra migrants), with 22 miserable, the 5 unhappy, and 19 fine/content/ecstatic.  The one ecstatic guy is in the hospital, happy b/c his wife gave birth, even though his wife is insane, the baby is starving and miserable, other kids are dead.  The miserable dwarves are already insane or going insane, you can't tell really.

I think the not-miserable ones are the most recent migrants who never spent time getting to know people in that godawful dining room.  I'm taking some measures by placing non-miserable dwarves in a squad and giving them weapons (not activating them though).  Also giving these dwarves bedrooms.

The legendary weaponsmith will be insane too, but until he goes I'm having him turn as much steel into masterwork discs and axes and swords as possible.  He started crying to the miserable mayor, then they started a fist fight with each other, but felt better afterward.

[Uronym]

How have I been?

[slothen]

what was your dwarf's name?  if you were dwarfed before you're probably dead

[Uronym]

I'm Uronym. I think someone started off from a save other than mine somewhere.

[slothen]

Slothen update 3.  22nd Malachite, 128, Mid-Summer

Dwarves who went insane ages ago are now all dying off from thirst in waves.  I've given most of the healthiest dwarves bedrooms.  I've repaired the lever for the bridge.  The bridge has some steel disc traps in front of it.  Not enough to deter a siege but could buy some time certainly in an ambush.  The discs are likely some of the last things our legendary furnace operator could make.  He's miserable but has a meeting with our mayor.  Speaking of our mayor, we have a new one.  The last mayor was tantruming constantly.  I was expecting him to lose it at any minute, but then.





So now, this other imminently sane dwarf goes into a fell mood and grabs the imminently insane mayor.  He snaps the mayors neck, hauls him to butcher's shop, and hacks the guy limb from limb!



Frankly, I'm thrilled.  The earring is awesome.  I imagine it bone, carved to look like a large hanging mace from the wearer's ear.  And now, instead of two imminently dead dwarves, I have one ecstatic one, and a legendary bone carver at that!  I name this dwarf Dr. Hannibal, and appoint him my chief medical dwarf.  I might make him captain of the guard as well.

Anyway, spiral has nearly leveled out.  From a peak of 85 dwarves, the fortress has 28,  with only 6 in danger of death or inanity.  Coffin production and burial have kept up well, and there are only couple ghosts that haunt surviving family members.  Key jobs have been split among the survivors, and I plan to carve out a decent living area and set up a training regimen for small militia.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

hospital to the north, corpse stockpiles.  Grey corpses are zombies.  Some animals are pastured in from of the traps for more warning.  Lots of food and drink are stockpiled.

Uronym, I did not see a dwarf with your name.  Darksilver, I have dwarfed "Hawk" female wax worker with swordsdwarf skills, migrated with her husband.  Of named dwarves, Wypie, Corai, FrankMcFuzz, and Prometheus have died.  I have dwarfed myself and nicknamed a few others.

[slothen]

Slothen update 4.  20th Obsidian, 128, Late Winter

Things are looking up around here.  After the meltdown of the last few months, the dwarves have come to the consensus that it is now time to do work.  Our ranks have been swelled with migrants, and the 20 or so survivors have made quite a comeback.  The depressed dwarf that turned the mayor into an earring is quite content now, even though he's being haunted by his dead spouse.  The new mayor was able to cheer up the legendary weaponsmith, and he's also made a full recovery, and many excellent steel weapons.  I regret in my time here I haven't been able to oversee the production of adamantine wafers.  Once this can be done however, I recommend the next overseer employ this dwarf to forge them, and then decorate them with steel and precious metals before distributing them to the militia.  Speaking of the militia, they are rather well clad and organized.  We have two squads of melee dwarfs with three per squad, and the fortress guard is a squad of 8-strong marksdwarves.  They're not fully equipped or trained, but they're well on the way there.  Steel production has held up nicely through the craziness of the last few months.  A competent armorsmith arrived as a migrant and made some suitable armor for them as well.

I've ordered new living spaces carved out in a layer of marble below the first cavern.  A grand dining hall is nearly furnished and already in use, and other spaces have been carved.  There are new apartments for nobles, militia, and otherwise exceptional dwarfs.  These will be lavishly furnished in recognition of the hard work and suffering these citizens have endured, and to ensure they remain pillars of our society.  There is still much work to do.

We have been attacked again by the dead.  They immediately fall upon the fortress liason who has just concluded a meeting at our fortress.  His death could prove to be a future inconvenience.  The militia are called to alert, the bridge is retracted and our fortress is sealed with no casualties except a dog.  The serrated discs I've mentioned are outside the ditch, before the bridge, and even once its retracted many zombies walk into it and are sliced and diced.  There are still more than 50 out there.  The melee squads will remain on alert in case the dead from our graves begin to rise.  The fortress guard will ascend the walls and begin thinning their numbers with their crossbows.

While the guard goes to work, a were-giraffe child appears, slaughters a few capybara's and then disappears.  I pay it little mind.  I send the marksdwarves out of the gates and they hunt down the remaining corpses with little trouble.



It is now mid spring, and my time as overseer here has ended.  I will take this time to do an overview of the state of the fortress, improvements made, potential problems for the future.

-I've made a very good start on a functioning militia.  We have enough dwarves to draft additional militia squads easily, and we produce steel quickly enough to keep them well armed and armored.  In the current setup, the fortress guard uses metal armor, steel crossbows, and and is a part-time force, and does not train when the fortress is under threat.  Should large numbers of bones be available, then an archery range would be a good addition.  Many migrants have some compentency with crossbows, we could easily double the amount of marksdwarves.  Because they don't train, they stay relatively happy and continue to do their civilian jobs.  Marksdwarves have proven extremely effective against the zombies that have besieged us.

-Some adequate living spaces have been made for our population, and there is room to expand them in the marble layer below the first cavern.  I would advocate moving more workshops, stockpiles, and especially the hospital into this area.  We just recieved a wave of 40 newcomers, bringing the fortress population up to 106 dwarves.

-There are two flying forgotten beasts in the first cavern layer.  I've walled up the well that opens into this cavern as a precaution, but that well will be needed if any dwarves are injured during winter.

-The deaths of so many of our fortress population has left huge quantities of clothing strewed about.  For now it lies in great stockpiles on the surface layer, I hope that with continued bin production it can be less of a mess.

-Food and booze stockpiles are very high, however with our fortress population now at its highest ever, I would not neglect the current facilities.  I would take this time to expand them, as they are cramped and inefficient in their current state.  We also have no clothing industry in place, due to the surplus of clothing we currently enjoy.

-If we were sieged by goblins with bowmen, we would not be able to repell them without heavy casualties.  We would be forced to wait them out.  Similarly, if we were besieged by necromancers, they would have ample corpses to revive.  There is no trap system in place to lure zombies in and make the corpses inaccessible from such a necromancer.  A zombie trap corridor with a dodge-pit to render the bodies harmless could be effective against goblins and necromancers.

-A herbalist just made an elf bone bed.  That's pretty awesome.  I believe we will be elevated to a barony soon, at least once a new fortress liason is appointed.  I would suggest identifying a candidate for elevation to baron, and placing the elf-bone bed in his/her room.

It menaces with spikes of elf bone.


Another artifact, created earlier.  686,800 dwarf bucks

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This moody child was surrounded by two ghosts while making the hematite crown.
The ghosts were not the child's parents, but the child's parents were dead.  After the artifact was made, the child's paternal grandparents and his uncle migrated to the fortress.


Inorganic, deadly spittle, flying forgotten beast.  Not the worst combination, but might be a problem.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-Finally, with such huge waves of immigrants, the distribution of labor is quite inefficient.  The last time I could look at it and distribute jobs, I was doing it with 20 dwarves, not 80 (lots of immigrant children).  This could really do with some streamlining.  Just make sure you know who is in the military and who isn't when you assign jobs.


Well, that's it.  Had a ton of fun.  I think the fortress is in great shape for whatever the next person wants to do.  I'll be monitoring this thread.  Does anyone oppose me making a new thread with links to the updates and an updated player list?  I think the OP has been abandoned by Basque and it would help things stay organized.  I think there's still lots of interest and I'd rather not see this succession die after I had so much fun.  Right now its mid-spring, so I played about a year and a half, again, I hope no one minds.

DL LINK: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6201

[Will_Tuna]

I'm not going to be able to take a turn, my computer crashes at random moments so i havn't been able to  play DF for  a while now!

cheers!