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[MrWillsauce]

Introduction
I wanted to build a tower fortress made completely out of ice, so I embarked on an isolated mult-biomed tundra (one of the biomes being an arctic ocean for ice mining). The other two were pansy-ass good-aligned biomes with plenty of cute fluffy bunnies running around. Isolated from the goblins and with few to no large predators on their embark site, these dwarves should have been fairly safe and should have lived happy long lives of mining ice and being masons. The keyword in the previous sentence is 'should'. Indeed they probably would have lived out a nice peaceful existence, if I weren't a complete sadistic asshole.

Embark to Autumn

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The embarking party known as the "Oil of Oceans" (I thought this an extremely fitting name seeing as how I was planning to completely ravage the ocean for building material) consisted of a hunter, three miners, two masons, and a farmer along with plenty of poultry, some booze and food to last a while, and a breeding pair each of cats and dogs. I brought no extra wood with me even though I knew the land was barren of trees (I didn't see a point in getting them beds if they were disposable slave labor anyway; how soon they died or went insane made no difference if I could always recolonize). When the wagon arrived in the year 91, I immediately set the three miners to work in the Ocean so that the dwarves could have some shelter (I didn't want to dig them out homes, they can get out of the snow storms when they've earned it). I had the miners channel the ocean instead of just mining and leaving a floor because the idea of having parallel sheets of ice jutting off the coast seems silly to me. I had the hunter disassemble the wagon and use one of the fungilogs to build himself a crossbow, and another to make some bolts (I had brought a quiver with him). He hunted the elk that once happily frolicked on the peaceful tundra, along with the two hunting dogs he trained, and became the expedition's resident butcher. As soon as the ice started to flow (so to speak) the two masons and farmer were put to work. I didn't want to set up a farm yet for the same reason I didn't dig them a temporary shelter: I wanted to be careful with my design of the fortress and not make any mistakes that might ruin the beauty of the finished product. From then until the beginning of Autumn the fortress continued to mine ice and erect the first ice walls of the fortress. The designs of the walls were constantly reworked as they were built (I had no image in my head of what the fort would look like), so the masons spent a lot of time undoing their work. Three migrants had come since the wagon landed, and all of them were put to work as masons.

The Autumn Dehydration

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Right after the caravan from the Mountainhomes arrived in Autumn, I discovered my first body, a mason from the initial embarking party. Quickly I ordered the dwarves to haul everything to the trading depot to try and buy some alcohol. The dwarves began dropping like flies as goods were rushed to the depot. The bodies were stripped naked and left out in the snow and their clothes were brought to the depot to trade for booze. I traded away my anvil, eggs, empty barrels; even blocks of ice were carried en masse to the trading depot. I had no broker to speak of, so I chose a random mason to do the dealings. We trade for roughly 6 barrels full of alcohol, when suddenly 8 migrants arrived. I traded away many of their belongings for alcohol too. I completely cleaned out the caravan of all its booze and nothing more (I tried to get another pick, but they refused to haggle). I finally had some booze, but even after it was acquired nearly all the dwarves died before they could make it to the barrels.

The Pillar of Generations

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

From the start my idea for this building site was that it would span several reclaims and would be the home to many generations of dwarves. To chronicle the brave dwarves who settled, I came up with an idea: the Pillar of Generations. In the frozen sea where the miners were digging up ice, I dug a tunnel from an empty portion of the ocean into the coast and left a 9x4 tile pillar standing, and channeled a 1 tile walkway around it. The idea was for every dwarf who settled in Masterlashes to engrave a picture into the side of pillar, and as the generations went on and room ran out, the channel around it would be dug deeper. As the pillar collects drawings it grows taller. It was also a way to preserve the name of all the adult dwarves who lived in my fortress, because the engraving will always retain the artist's name (even in adventurer mode). Unfortunately I didn't cancel the dwarves' normal work orders when I assigned them to be stone detailers and I only assigned one dwarf stone detailing at a time (I probably could do more, but fucking up engraving is a mistake you can't undo in this situation). I had only gotten the initial seven and one of the first migrants to sign when the mass dehydration hit, so a few dwarves died without signing the Pillar. I am currently getting the 8 new immigrants to sign it before they die too.
The Pillar as of Opal 11th, 91:

Winter: Current Events

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The only survivors of the Autumn Dehydration are two of the initial seven: the hunter and a mason and of course all of the eight migrants. The mason drifts in and out of insanity and tantrum constantly, and the hunter is getting their quickly. It's a shame about the hunter; I was going to use him to put down tantrumming dwarves, but it looks like he's going to be the other half of that job pretty soon. So far neither have hurt any dwarves or pets, so I've let them live.




Here's a look at the actual ice fortress as it currently is:

If any of you would like to be dwarfed into this hellhole, then your current choices are: an unhappy hunter about to go postal on the whole fort with his crossbow, a miserable mason insane with hunger and thirst, one of three new miners from the migrant wave, one of five new masons. I probably won't be doing any roleplaying or doing any real storytelling besides just describing what happens. But if anybody else wants to write journals, dwarf POVs, or anything like that it would be great.

[Valrandir]

It is quite brutal!
I feel for those dwarves.