1 Granite 1057Lightningfalcon, the Overseer, suddenly announced that he was resigning from his position. I’m not sure why. It was hard to understand what he was saying -- he uses a lot of strange words. I was curious, so I asked someone, and they said he basically thought that it was bad to have the same person be in charge for too long.
He handed off his duties to Splint, I think because his military career means he’s a good leader. Lightningfalcon talks too much. He kept rambling on about ‘revolution’ and things like that. It made it hard to work out what he was taking about.
Afterwards, Splint came to me and insisted that I run the fort instead. He didn’t explain why very well. I know I don’t deserve such an honour. Suspicious.
They have something to do with it, I know it.
They’ve wormed
their way into every nook and cranny. Dwarves are
their puppets, following
their orders without even knowing it. I’ll have to be ca
I heard a noise. Not sure where it came from. Suspicious.
This is the outside of the fort. Apparently, one of the previous overseers built a machine that floods everything outside with lava. Also, the catapult is facing inwards, towards our dwarves.
They thought I wouldn’t notice, but I’m wise to
their games. I’ll leave it as-is for now. I mustn't let on that I know.
I asked Lightningfalcon how to turn off the machine. He directed me to a lever in Captainarchmage’s bedroom:
The shape of the walls reminds me of a disturbing dream I once had. Weird bugs were crawling out of a black void, and I had to fight them off with a strange flying ballista. There was no colours or shades or even sounds, just white shapes on empty black space and a grating, rhythmic drumming. There's something to this, I know it. Can they slither their way into people's minds, as well? Is there no limit to their witchery?I was worried that it was a trap, but it seemed to work the way he said it would:
Also, he called me a ‘proletariat’. Is that even a word? Suspicious.
When looking over the map of the fortress, I noticed that Captainarchmage has a large private burial chamber beyond the magma flow:
Its shape is eerily-familiar, just like his bedroom. I could hear
them everywhere inside, crawling around behind the walls, gossiping in their weird language.
I could also hear something else. Not
them. Something worse. It was like a droning inside my skull. I tried covering my ears, but it didn't get any quieter. There weren't any words to it, but I understood the meaning. They wanted me to dig deeper. I wanted to dig deeper. I didn't have a pick, so I started scuffing at the cavern wall with my bare fingers. They were bleeding by the time I stopped myself.
Something horrible is hiding here, I know it. I'll see if I can get the smithing area expanded. We need to arm ourselves.
2 Granite 1057I've found what I think is the lever to irrigate the farms:
There are levers everywhere in this fortress. I don't know what any of them do. Most of them don't even seem to be near any machinery. Are
they building false levers to trick me?
The way the military is organised is very strange. There were a lot of people in solo squads, which made it hard to manage them. I've assembled all of the stragglers into larger units. I wanted to activate my own squad, to practice with my axe, but Splint said that's not a good idea. We don't have any armour, so I'd probably end up hurting people.
4 Granite 1057The farms were irrigated, and I ordered them to start planting. They'll be growing mostly sweet pods, with one plot producing plump helmets. My dad always said that sweet pods were a good crop, because their syrup kept forever and was nutritious enough to be stretched very far if harvests were poor. I don't like the taste, though. It's too sweet. Real men eat meat and drink beer.
I looked at the census, and this fortress has lost 6 miners in accidents already.
They had something to do with it, I know it.
It doesn't look like any of the dwarves here have been assigned to operate smelters. I drafted a couple peasants to do it. They seemed happy to have something to do.
6 Granite 1057I looked everywhere, and the only stills I could find were sitting in the river's flood plain:
Most of our other farming workshops were there, too. This isn't safe. Those floods can easily sweep away dwarves.
I looked for a better place to put the stills, and I think I found a good spot. See, it's right next to a plant stockpile:
I'll have to move around some furniture in the nobles' bedrooms to fit them in, but the swelled-headed prats have it coming anyways.
7 Granite 1057The Trade Minister just banned the export of buckets. I guess he didn't like me screwing with his home decor.
10 Granite 1057The cave river flooded its banks today. Corai fell in the water and nearly drowned. Everybody else just got wet.
The new smelting area has been dug out. We're just waiting for the smelters to be built:
This will help us arm ourselves.
They are planning something, mark my words. We've stumbled onto something
they never meant for us to see.
15 GraniteOur new brewery is working well:
The nobles involved seem to be annoyed by all the activity in their bedrooms. Serves the lazy fuckers right.
Meanwhile, the elves have arrived to trade. Fucking girlie pansies, the lot of them, but as long as they brought useful stuff and make sure not to touch me, they can stay.
Unfortunately, that's going to have to wait a while, because there's a drawbridge in the way of the entrance and I have no way of figuring out which of the dozens and dozens of levers in this place works it:
That's okay, though, because I have an idea for a new entrance, with a more-secure depot location:
There's a bunch of really big empty chambers dug out just within the cliff face. I have no idea what they were for, but this'll be what they're for from now on. See, the way I reckon it, the longer bad guys have to walk to get us, the more time we have to head them off. I think I have an idea for a trap, too. I'm so smart sometimes.
19 Granite 1057The architects keep cancelling construction of the trade depot. They won't tell me why. Suspicious.
They're pulling strings, I know it.
It doesn't matter. I'm still making a new entrance.
21 Granite 1057Our mayor keeps whining for red spinel crap. I don't think red spinel's even a thing. [OOC: Neither does Microsoft Word, apparently :V] He can have some just as soon as he actually gets off his ass and does something around here besides complain.
The new smelters are finally up. Why did they take so long? Suspicious.
23 Granite 1057I was running around asking people if they'd seen
them plotting with our architects when I realised what the actual cause of the delay was:
This is the most heavily-trafficked hallway in the whole fortress, and it's barely wide enough for two dwarves to squeeze past each other shoulder-to-shoulder. Dwarves, cats, dogs, horses, and everything else all have to push past each other to get where they need to go. I guess it could have been an honest mistake.
Scratch that, I know they had something to do with it. This is their stronghold, I've decided, or at least one of them. Just the other day, I saw one of them peeking out at me between the wine barrels with its beady eyes. It was spying on me, I know it. I swung my axe at it, but it just ended up making a hole in a barrel. It got away. It's reporting back to its masters in the deep, I know it.Anyways, I'll get that hallway fixed up.
25 Granite 1057I've installed a floodgate from the river feeding into the new entrance corridor, and put up a lever in the dining hall:
[OOC: The chambers are too big to get them all in a single screenshot or show how they all connect to each other, but rest assured that those skinny hallways feed into something resembling an entrance at some point off-screen.]
I'm just waiting for the lever to be linked. They don't even need to be near the machine they're working, or so the eggheads tell me. Impressive, I suppose.
1 Slate 1057I've ordered the production of some suits of bronze armour. I think it'd be a good idea to be as prepared as possible. I've also ordered the production of another anvil.
Meanwhile, the elves have arrived at the depot to trade, but I'm not opening up until the entrance trap is finished. What's taking the mechanics so long? Suspicious.
I just found out that our workers had been given standing orders to not tell me whenever they cancel a job. Nobody could tell me who gave the order, but I know. Oh, yes.
Nobody was taking the jobs I'd set up at the magma forge, so I checked the census and it looks like we don't actually have any decent armour or weaponsmiths anywhere in the fortress. Time to draft some more peasants.
4 Slate 1057I'm still waiting for the lever to be linked. The mechanics keep walking to the floodgate, getting started on linking it, and then dropping the mechanism in the mud and running off to get a drink. Bunch of lazy eggheads. Is it too much to ask for them to crawl out of their little tinker-toy workshops and do some actual labour? Someone gives you an order, you do it. I hate them more than
them.
They might be unholy monsters, but at least
they work hard at it.
Speaking of tinker-toy workshops, the boss mechanic, a guy named Scruffy II, has been in his workshop smashing out mechanisms without a break since early Spring. There was a mountain of mechanisms around him; I could barely see his hands as he worked the stone, they were moving so fast. Hard-working, skilled. That's an egghead I can put up with. I told him to take a break so he could do the thing with the floodgate. Hopefully he'll work more qui
Holy Armok, I have never seen a dwarf move so fast, let alone a chump mechanic like Scruffy. That can't be right. Suspicious.
8 Slate 1057Scruffy did it! The mechanisms were installed! I still think he's a freak, but he's a useful freak, so I'm not complaining.
9 Slate 1057People kept coming up to me and telling me that they couldn't feed our prisoners, because we don't have any food. I called up our farmers and shouted at them for a bit for being beardless slackers who will probably kill the entire fortress with their laziness.
Then they told me that they couldn't plant most of the crops I'd ordered planted, because there weren't any seeds to plant.
Why didn't anyone tell me that all we had was plump helmet spawn?
Unless... maybe they didn't realise either? Dad always said that
they love seeds... Dammit.
I know how to solve this, though:
I hate puppies anyway. Especially the little ones. They remind me of
them.
Now that the floodgate is linked to the dining-hall lever, I want to test it to see if it works. Unfortunately...
The emergency doors I ordered still haven't been installed. These good-for-nothing lumps will be the death of me.
Oh, and I found out the real reason why nobody was using the magma forge.
Someone had ordered that it only be used by someone called SanDiego III, who until a little bit ago had been in jail. I looked at his resume-thingy, and it wasn't impressive:
This idiot doesn't deserve to be given his own mini-forge, let alone our entire magma-forging setup.
They seem to be screwing with me at every turn in this fortress.
12 Slate 1057It was taking a while for the dogs to be butchered. I checked, and it turns out the butcher's shops are on the other side of the Hell-Hall from the rest of the fortress:
I'd widened the Hell-Hall a little, but there wasn't much room for me to do so, and it's probably even harder to get through it when you're dragging a struggling puppy behind you. I found some empty rooms close to the dining hall which look like good places to put butcher's shops. Not sure why they're even there, though. Maybe
they were using them as meeting areas.
Also, I found some more stills in yet another room, which someone really should have told me about before I rearranged the Trade Minister's bedroom:
I've ordered a couple kitchens to be built in there with them. We have barrels and barrels of animal fat lying around being useless when we could easily be making it into food that we badly need.
14 Slate 1057Some migrants have been spotted on the horizon. They've brought a governor with them. As if we don't already have enough useless ass-pickers wasting our booze.
We can't go leaving them out in the cold, all the same. I've ordered the new entrance to finally be opened:
Also, I've ordered our workers to go gather plants along the riverbank. The lack of booze is killing me. I'll get
them for this, I swear.
19 Slate 1057As soon as the entrance was dug, our dwarves begin piling outside to pick up some metal crap left behind by the lava flood. I told them to stay inside, and they all just sat around at the entrance staring across the field like a caged hog at a bucket of mushrooms. I decided to let them go pick up the stuff, since the idiots weren't listening to anything else I said.
23 Slate 1057I've been getting lots of dull headaches lately, and I hear weird noises in the back of my head sometimes when I'm by myself. It might be
them at work, but then again it might just be because I haven't been getting enough wine. It's hard to tell.
That new fat-cat Governor's barely been here a week and he's already whining for marble shit. I know what to do about it, though:
That private dining room he's bitching for will come with a surprise. I can't wait to see his waterlogged corpse.
2 Felsite 1057One of the dwarves in the prison has started babbling loudly to himself:
He's been locked up alone in there for a while. He started a bunch of fights a while back, and he's been in there ever since. I guess
they must have finally gotten to him. Serves the bastard right.
Our entrance is finally clear of dwarves, so I'm finally going to test the flooding trap:
There's still a stray horse wandering around in there, but I'm not concerned. That way we'll get to see how well it works.
3 Felsite 1057The flooding trap didn't work at all. Crap. I know how to fix it, though.
10 Felsite 1057I've ordered a second magma forge to be built:
We found a bunch of spare anvils nobody told me about while looking for building materials. Does anybody bother keeping track of what this fortress does or does not have? Lazy fucks.
11 Felsite 1057There weren't enough supports for the governor's chambers, so the roof caved in while the engravers were smoothing the walls:
Nobody died except for a dog, which I guess is good. To be honest, though, I was disappointed that there weren't any injuries. I hate these worthless shitpiles I've been stuck with.
18 Felsite 1057The workers kept dragging their heels like they always do, but the improvements to the flooding machine are finally done:
After waiting for that last worker to clear out, I decide to try it out:
19 Felsite 1057
Now all I need is something warm and breathing to try it on.
24 Felsite 1057I've decided to build another flooding machine, this one flooding the Hell-Hall in case invaders get past our entrance:
I admit I'm already thinking of using it on our own dwarves. Lazy fuckers could use a good dunking.
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Topic: CraftedDreams - A 2-D Succession Fort (Read 46180 times)