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Yes

4 (14.3%)

No

1 (3.6%)

It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

6 (21.4%)

I wish I could have joined in.

17 (60.7%)

Total Members Voted: 28

[wierd]

[Kenozi is probably marveling over wierd's little contributions to fortress agriculture. "Refuse stockpiles" are absurdly wasteful of valuable biomatter and phosphates, especialy where bone and vermin corpses come into play. A little dehydration, treatment with nitric acid to break down some of the chemical bonds, followed by pulverization and composting with more "dwarven" waste products (ahem), and you have yourself an amazingly potent fertilizer. Plow the stuff in, monitor the pH levels and sweeten or acidify as needed, and you will grow weeds 8ft tall. No kidding. The abundance of biomatter would make fungal cultivation especially productive, as long as saline levels were kept in line. Indoors, the growing rooms are a controlled environment, so ideal growing conditions for specific crops can be ensured.]

[Reudh]

[Yeah, I always thought so. Being that most of the forumites are pretty decent chemists, they would've realised that refuse was a foolish use of biomatter. For that matter, would it be possible to get Wierd to rig up some kind of biofuel engine for use for lighting? Or would that be impractical?

Either way, with that piece I was just getting back into the groove, with a plotless piece.]

[wierd]

[I would suggest against the use of syngas inside the subterene environs of the the fortress, due to carbon monoxide being a principle component of the flammable mixture. (Syngas is a combustible mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gasses, created by "cracking" of biomatter. It was frequently used to light streetlamps in the 1900s, and can also power internal combustion engines. Biofueled vehicles almost certainly run on syngas.) A better solution would be the inefficient generation of electrical power from solid-state thermocouplings, installed near the magma sea. The thermoelectric effect is very inefficient, but for dwarves, metals are an abundant material, and that inefficiency, coupled with ready access to an 'inexhaustible' heat source, and more traditional steam power generation would supply the fortress with all the power it would ever need, as well as a source of central heating climate control.]

[For reference, the thermoelectric effect in this case is the Seebeck effect; when a sandwich of dissimilar metals (say, iron sandwiched with copper) is heated on one side, an electrical potential gradient is created. This potential is very small, but is solid-state. Coupled with a traditional alternator design generator to supply the initial charge on the stator coil, and a constant rotation provided by a squirrel cage, and a steam flow, you can use the solidstate power supplied by the thermoelectric pylon to produce a considerably greater electrical power flow, without the need of any permanent magnets whatsoever. Using the cave lakes of cavern layer 3, and the heated rock of the magma sea, the fortress could be supplied with nearly limitless electrical power, given sufficient investments in infrastructure.]

[WillowLuman]

[That's a lot of pipes, though, but a geothermal outpost would be worthwhile. Aquifer gravity power draining into the lower lakes could also work, but is less sustainable and could result in flooding. We could also have zombie-operated turbines, which would last as long as they had enough intact body to push with, but that manual labor is pretty low output, as they wouldn't be able to turn the solenoids very fast. We could also set up helictical wind turbines, more compact and efficient than the great bladed models, though being surrounded by forest we might not get much from them. And with a lot of hard work we might be able to cobble together a small fission reactor (cooling would be the main problem if we built it though).

On a similar note, I've always hypothesized that, since dwarves will help tend the fields no matter what you set their preferences to, they must all be taking their movements there.]

[Eric Blank]

Everything was boring as of late. The construction of the fortress' keep was left to the dwarven mechanics and engineers working there, and they were familiar enough with obsidian casting techniques, and all the hazards and quirks involved, that Eric had only needed to supply the blueprints for the final product and manage construction when the work crews were split. Now, though, he worked almost solely on repairing the gate whenever it busted, making furniture, and feeding his centipedes.

Today, though had been very interesting. When the troop of dwarves returned without one of their members, Eric had gone out with the crew, Vemini, and Oliolli to investigate, and got his first up-close and long-winded view of the fields outside. Even the grass in the immediate area had mutated to form a ground cover of thick, branching tubes and blobs of tissue, with all manner of defects. There were strange organisms living by the marshy river banks which whipped back and forth, swatting equally-deformed insects with a sticky membranous fan, resembling corral, and dragging them towards an orifice in the center, similar to how sea anemones do. Altogether, they resembled mutated bats, with their backsides planted firmly on the ground. They had grown fat, but when Eric tried to approach one, it smacked him in the face with the back of it's fan-wing, which turned out to be covered in sharp, bristly hairs, leaving him with a series of tiny scratches and a rash.

There were equally strange primate-like beings hiding under logs and horribly cancerous trees, where they were hidden in shadows. Altogether, the strange fauna and flora seemed to have migrated into zones in which X and Wierd had detected no harmful radiation, magical or otherwise. The group found Sedil, however, fairly near one of the more hazardous areas...

[Leaving this for Oliolli.]

[WillowLuman]

[I don't think we've got a huge area of Pandora-like weirdness. Most plants would probably just be dead (or undead). Cool as it may be, I don't think it works, as the ship exploded well within sight of the fort, leaving a large scorched patch visible from the walls. If there was some alien mutant biome now, we'd be in it, and we'd have been fighting mutants constantly. Works better with what's already established if the nearby ponds are contaminated somehow and occasionally something drinks from one and turns freaky.

The problem being there for 3 or so months now and being so close, it just doesn't make sense that we're only investigating it now.]

[Eric Blank]

[You're no fun ]

[WillowLuman]

[Sorry, it's a regrettable sacrifice in a GM's line of duty ]

[It might make more sense that this excursion is the latest in attempts to find solutions to the problem. Something bad could still happen to one of the scouts; not being careful, getting too near the nasty water, etc... Sort of a mini-Chernobyl kind of disaster zone.]

[wierd]

[Just don't turn our lovely little fortress into dzerzhinsk ok? I am perfectly fine with fukishima daichi type contamination making freaky giant plants, mutated butterflies, and the occasional DF style superbeast... but don't make it too deadly now, ok?]

[Gizogin]

[On the subject of power, you all seem to have forgotten that DF plays fast and loose with conservation of energy.  A simple water-reactor setup would provide endless, clean, reliable power for all our needs.  I'm pretty sure Gizo X actually runs on a more compact version of the same, with the water replaced by something less temperamental (antifreeze, or maybe alcohol; I expect dwarven wine would work well).  Gyroscopically balanced, of course.]

[@Reudh: I'm no chemist.  My specialty is mechanical engineering, and I'm a dab hand at physics.  Kinda wierd that I ended up as the doctor (this is why I keep the descriptions of my medical procedures so vague; I have no idea how that kind of stuff actually works).]

[wierd]

[LOL! That's funny. I am a quality engineer/CNC programmer. My chemistry experience is nearly *all* self taught as a "for fun!" Activity, likewise with my limited knowledge of biochemistry and medical proceedures/terminologies. I find it funny that I have more practical experience treating and dressing wounds (on large animals) than our doctor does. but this is fiction, and we can bend the truth a little.)

[WillowLuman]

[The game has gradually updated while we've been here, as our adversary witnessed the earlier abuse of physics. Our preexisting ones might still run due to a sort of bizarre inertia, probably having become magical in a way, but new ones would fall prey to pesky friction. An aquifer reactor might still work, though.]

[wierd]

[Realistically speaking, an aquifer is under pressure from the overburden. Wells don't spray water, because the pressure is very close to neutral, but it still is under pressure. Note the issues with subsidence when aquifers are overutilized.  Connecting 2 aquifers would have very little effect, unless the 2 aquifers are experiencing pressure differences. (Say, dissolved gasses.) Installing a turbine inside an underground river, such as through the top of a sinkhole, might be effective. In this case, the water has an actual place to go, and actively flows that direction. The steam powered alternator array I outlined could completely exist on cavern layer 3, with minimal plumbing. Hot steam is directly vented right back out over the top of the underground lake that the generator complex is fed by, and simply recondenses on the cieling and drips back down. The whole of the cavern system operates as a heatsink. High voltage power lines, and either stair or elevator access to that section of cavern layer 3 are all that would be required. The thermocoupler stack pylons used to provide the initial bootstrap power for the alternator coil winds don't need a very large thermal gradient. A few degrees centigrade is more than sufficient. This means they can also be installed directly on cavern layer 3. You don't need actual magma temps to heat the water to steaming conditions, just greater than 100c. (Magma is considerably hotter. ) cavern 3 is very close to the magma sea, and so the water is probably already quite warm already. Other than periodic maintenence of the alternators and steam turbines, the whole complex could be essentially ignored. Proper design would use low velocity turbines with very heavy windings to produce very high current, then run through a solid state transformer substation into high voltage distribution current.  An artificial island with a direct and protected access system to the fortress complex above would be an effective arrangement. Really, if you replaced steam with stirling engines you could get away with even lower thermal gradients, but at the expense of higher infrastructure deployment costs per kilowatt. ]

[WillowLuman]

ninja, edited
[I was thinking something more akin the classic "poke hole in aquifer, provide downwards path, put water wheel."]

He'd almost lost the at the part about the cocoa, but, in the end, they seemed to have very much enjoyed the tale of the young child who took a magical caravan wagon train to the frozen north and received the First Gift of Christmas from the jolly man in the jolly hillock-hall. HugoLuman hoped he hadn't set the stage for a great nuisance further down the line, but the storytelling cheered him up and gave him ideas to ponder for a few hours.


It was late now. HugoLuman uncurled from the cloth stockpile at the sound of dwarven footsteps coming towards the doorway. Wierd entered, carrying a lantern and something folio-sized wrapped in oilskin. "Keep your voice down," he whispered, "they might be listening. I left some decoy papers as a diversion, but that doesn't give us long. Swallow this."

"What!?"

"Shhh! I don't think they understand our speech but not taking chances. Yes, swallow it. I looked at X's scans of you, there's what looks like a modified gizzard for storing treasure en route to the hoard."

"But that's disgusting! And wouldn't this encourage them to cut my throat open?"

"To the rats it might look like you're destroying the profane writing, and besides, it could keep my only written notes safe."

[Oliolli]

The problem being there for 3 or so months now and being so close, it just doesn't make sense that we're only investigating it now.]

Well of course we've investigated it before. It's just Eric's first time. The main point of this expedition is to find Sedil.


Sedil stood absolutely still. As the dwarves had pointed out, from a distance he appeared to be crying, his hands covering his face a small distance away, but he made no sound. Oliolli signed for the others to stand back and cover him as he walked closer. He didn't feel comfortable walking this close to the more hazardous areas, but duty called. As he got closer to Sedil, he checked Sedil's face from the side. Nothing seemed wrong, and Sedil's face didn't look like that of someone who had been crying. Oliolli had trouble making out Sedil's eyes, but they seemed to be staring straight forward.

"Hey, Sedil?"

There was no response. Oliolli grabbed Sedil's arm and tried to pull it away from the dwarf's face, but the arm seemed stuck, almost as if it were made of stone. Not wanting to accidentally break the arm off or anything, Oliolli let go and circled around to the dwarf's other side, calling his name out again. Still no response, so Oliolli decided to take prodding for a reaction to the next level. He pulled out the adamantine sword, and placed the blade against the back of Sedil's hand, even putting some pressure on it. There was still no response. Taking the blade away, he noted that there was not even cut on Sedil's hand.

"Maybe we should take him back to the fort? Gizogin, X or Wierd may be able to... um... fix him."

Oliolli grabbed Sedil at the waist and lifted - and was surprised to find that he couldn't move Sedil. He was just too heavy to be moved. He tried again, twice, before returning to the rest of the crew in low spirits.

"It's almost like he's made out of slade now. He's unbelievably heavy and my sword did't even leave a scratch on him when I tested for a reaction. I don't think we can get him back, at least not yet."

The group then returned to the fort. The trip was rather uneventful, and everyone was quiet.