Index:
Year 2: Preparing the baseFirst level finishedFirst three levelsYear 5Year 6Level 13 completeYear 7Year 8Embark site as seen in IsoWorld:
Embarking, Granite 1, 101]
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There comes a time in the experience of a DF player when he finally decides to take the plunge and create his first megaproject.
For me, the time has come.
I will use the embark site I posted
here to construct a grand colossus. This colossus will be of a creature that strikes fear into the heart of every dorf -- the mighty elephant. No megaproject is complete without magma of course, and this Elephant of DOOM will be engineered to shoot magma out of its trunk. I will construct the fortress so that all visitors must pass underneath the elephant to enter, and I will excavate some ground in front of it to form a holding pool for the magma. This holding pool of course will be a special treat for sieges.
And because all of this just isn't dorfy enough, I am going to construct the entire thing (well, most of it) out of
soap.
Here are my preliminary sketches for the megaproject, from which I will make some floor plans:
The sketches were done on graph paper, but I scanned it too light and the grid doesn't show up. But the sketches give me a very basic idea for the dimensions I will need, and from that I will draw up some floor plans. I'm going to use one of the legs to house the magma pumpstack. I need a 3x4 space to hold the stack and the infrastructure, and an outer wall will increase that to 5x6. This forms the base size of the elephant. I may use one of the rear legs to house a power train connected to some water reactors. The magma will be pumped up to a holding tank in the head, where it will drain down into the trunk held back by a floodgate until fiery death is required. (It would look even cooler if it shot out of a raised trunk, but I don't want to get too involved with the engineering.) For ornamentation, I will give it red-colored gem windows for eyes, and maybe tip the trunks with gold. There will be a barrack of soldiers housed within the belly of the beast, and leftover space will be used for storage. And since constructed soap walls can be carved into fortifications, I will use one of the legs to make a
bee tower. I might put some fortifications in for marksdwarves as well.
I decided to model the colossus on an African elephant as opposed to an Asian elephant. African elephants are larger and more majestic, and I think more aggressive, which is appropriate, plus I think Asian elephants have wussy little ears in comparision. And the bigger ears will mean
more resources wasted needlessly a greater sense of power and grandeur.
Also, given that this is a magma-spewing giant elephant, it could also be seen as a tribute to
Boatmurdered and its infamous Project Fuck the World.
I will need a crapton of animal fat to make the soap. So I will need animals that breed quickly and in large numbers to help keep the fat supply up. Large numbers means birds. Quickly means birds that mature fast, so turkeys are out even though they make huge clutches. This leaves me with guineafowl, peafowl, or geese. Guineafowl produce little in the way of meat, so they're out. Geese and peafowl have about the same fat amounts, but peafowl have slightly better average egg production. Both can produce a maximum of 8 eggs, while the goose can produce a minimum of 4 compared to the peahen's 6. I'm going to toss some rock nest boxes on the embark group to speed things up a bit. Naturally, fat production will be supplemented by the slaughter of diverse other animals. The site is heavily forested, so I should have plenty of trees for making ash and then lye.
Invasions will be turned off until the project is completed. Then the !!FUN!! can begin. Though that bit of evil terrain up in the northeast could add some unexpected fun of it's own....
Well, I think I should get to work on the project.
Author
Topic: The Elephant of DOOM! Version 2.0 (Read 33142 times)