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[TheFlame52]

It is.

[Hetairos]

This would've been out about three weeks ago had I managed to cram it in before I left. Sorry, everyone. There is definitely enough to report on.

First, there was a cyclops. Nosost Inkglitter the Dutiful Mountain was his name. I thought he's just going to end up smashed to death with hammers like most such visitors, but he walked straight into a cage trap. I'm not sure what to do with him now. He might make a good dining hall decoration.

So that was easy, especially in comparison to what came next.



Fighting fire creatures is always tricky, not because of their rather laughable toughness, but their ability to quickly inflict a lot of damage. Fiery breath might be blocked, and hopefully dwarves will avoid burning vegetation, however this is not the case for fireballs. Pray they miss or hit something on their way to the target, otherwise casualties are guaranteed. Clever traps are helpful as long as the beast walks into them.

I closed off the fortress for the first time in years, only to realise it can just fly over my fortifications. Soldiers were sent to the walls, soon followed by citizen crossbow militia. The latter took the titan out after it decided to hover over the moat and fling fireballs at everything. Total casualties were one militia dwarf, a number of alpacas and elk birds, and one dumb horse which got itself cornered by spreading fire. There was also a lot of smoke inside the fortress shortly after coming from an unknown source.

Soon after, at the beginning of the next year, there was a rare announcement.



Fort's population was reduced to 160 dwarves by accidents and old age. One of the few dedicated marksdwarves died, making militia even more vital for missile support. A mason was killed by a magma crab. I couldn't even find the place it crawled in through.

Construction in Hell is slowly proceeding, and I don't think I can speed it up more. There is a bunch of demons stuck below one of the adamantine spires, and I'll soon arrive at the point when I'll have to get them out of the way. The plan is to stick all the war dogs in Wirejade into one cage, place it in Hell, close the way back and open another, then release the animals. They should pass by the demons on the way there, and provoke them into attacking. Even if the demons win, they should be weakened enough for the military to take them out without casualties. I want to get rid of the dogs anyway. I have more war animals than I could ever need.

The bear stuck in the easternmost spire has just died. I'll start fiddling with the place soon. Let's hope I don' mess up the levers.

[TheBiggerFish]

Welcome back!  Also, yay!

[Hetairos]

I feel I should add this isn't dead unless I proclaim it so. I'd probably upload a savegame if that were to happen.

[Sarrak]

Behold the coming of the Age of Heroes! And wait for dogfight with daemons.

[Loud Whispers]

I always hate it when I see a champion Dwarf, emerging undefeated - only to see them ignite. I once even managed to unleash a flood from an inactive quarry farm to save a champion marksdwarf who had been set on fire... Water puts out fires, but does not undo wounds. One thing I find funny is that these fire beasts can set your cage traps on fire but once caught cannot, even if they are trapped within wooden cages. Dwarven engineering is serious stuff.

And I'm not hopeful for the war dogs, but they should at least bruise one demon.

[Taupe]

I always hate it when I see a champion Dwarf, emerging undefeated - only to see them ignite. I once even managed to unleash a flood from an inactive quarry farm to save a champion marksdwarf who had been set on fire... Water puts out fires, but does not undo wounds. One thing I find funny is that these fire beasts can set your cage traps on fire but once caught cannot, even if they are trapped within wooden cages. Dwarven engineering is serious stuff.

And I'm not hopeful for the war dogs, but they should at least bruise one demon.

It's not the cage itself that keeps the target restrained, but the very idea of captivity. It's very psychological.

[Hetairos]

Strange, I was never notified about these replies and I swear the thread is marked as read whenever I post. Cages are magic indeed, after all they can be submerged in magma and as long as they don't burn or melt whatever's inside will remain unharmed.


The dogs were successful, and by that I mean they were mostly brutally murdered, the Slush Banshee punting them into walls and off ledges, only suffering minor scratches in the process. However, shortly after it and the other demons left, making the southern area of Hell safe to access, which is exactly what they were expected to do. Wirejade has been an extremely busy fort ever since, with the constantly ongoing construction of walls, scaffolding and extracting the last chunks of adamantine from the local spire. I'm thinking of making a tunnel leading there so the dwarves don't have to path through the caverns. Obsidian shortages hampered the construction sometimes, but now the farm is running again and so far keeping up with the demand. I have to pull plenty of levers.

It turns out that in eerie glowing pits you can only build if there is access from the side - a downward staircase on the level above won't work, with the tile marked as "blocked", as if there was a wall there. Not inaccessible, just blocked. Building from the pit's edge is however very much possible, which means I have to construct pathways to where I need something built, without using bridges because a supporting structure is necessary. Deep chasms are a pain to put walls on.

Population is at 152. Some dwarves died of old age, some to accidents. A glitch cave-in in the obsidian farm claimed a miner's life. I accidentally walled in an animal trainer while moving the training zone, and dehydration killed him. The oddest case was the dwarf found dead in the old throne room, sitting on the throne in a pool of his own blood. I have no idea what could've caused this. There would've almost been another casualty, but strangeness happened. A dwarf was knocked into water I was trying to remove from the obsidian farm by a cave-in, naturally unconscious, but didn't start drowning. Instead, she began to gain swimming skill, and got all the way up to Skilled (still knocked out) before I lowered the water level enough for someone to rescue her from starvation.

The eastern spire, where FBs were trapped, remains infested. Some bug is preventing the steel cockroach one I want to capture from falling into webbed traps, and the web spinner is naturally immune to them. Everything else is caged, including a demon. I don't remember if a cave-in would work. Probably not. I'll have to lure them out of there with war animals, straight to the containment area. It's going to be difficult. On the surface a minotaur child called Alnis walked into a cage, and has since grown up into an adult minotauress.



A few batches of crundle eggs hatched, and now I'm waiting for them to lose their training so I can use them as target practice. I got some new elk birds and giant eagles too. Breeding elk birds is difficult, because they're both egg-layers and grazers, and can't eat while in the nest. I got rid of my beehives, though. They were too buggy and not worth dedicating dwarves to beekeeping for what they offered. I can now sell them and the jugs. I hope the dwarves enjoy their last batch of mead. It's kind of sad seeing the hives left abandoned in pools of royal jelly.



And now random silliness.

Spoiler: Looking surprised while passed out? (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Mayor punishes a dwarf (click to show/hide)

Now the game is telling me a war dog has been found dead, but there is no dog corpse nor dwarf to find it there. What's up with that?

[Button]

Breeding elk birds is difficult, because they're both egg-layers and grazers, and can't eat while in the nest.

Make the females you want laying eggs available as pets. When they get hungry, their owners will bring them food (if they're not otherwise occupied).

[Hetairos]

I tried that, but nobody's claiming them. I might not have any dwarves with a preference for elk birds.

[Hetairos]

It is done! The great wall in Hell is complete, and dwarves are now free to work undisturbed anywhere within its perimeter. The last block was laid down on 9th of Malachite, 225, about 7 months before the 100th anniversary of Wirejade's foundation. There is still some scaffolding to take down, plus smoothing, but the walls are ready. The first thing I'm going to construct will be a refuse disposal system using minecarts and glowing pits. Right now I have a dragon to incinerate what I can't sell and a shaft to the magma sea where refuse is dropped in - both would be made redundant. I'll probably repurpose one of the old ore hauling routes for trash transport from inside the fort, extending it to the pit.

Coming up next are airlock gates for releasing war animals outside the walls. They're not really supposed to win, it's how I plan to kill most of them off. What are dogs good for when you have giant tigers? Nothing, unless you like wasting FPS. I have about 600 war-trained beasts, and the plan is to reduce that number to a quarter of its size. After that, I'll try to decipher my old notes regarding minecart cannons that could be fed from above. Even if there is some exploity way to dig in slade, you can't dig down at the bottom since there is no more map to dig in. As far as I remember, it would leak a lot... perhaps I could redesign them a little utilising magma's lack of pressure.

However, all that will have to wait. The population is at a meagre 140. At least 5 dwarves died of old age, including one of my best marksdwarves. Several more are past 160 and can pass away any year now. A fire imp burned a dwarf dead before I sealed off the magma, and there may have been other incidents I don't remember. I am reassigning unmarried dwarves to their own squads and sending them down to a small dining room near the forges I'll be locking down later on. Hopefully, that should get them to mingle and keep them happy. It's a tedious process - I expected Dwarf Therapist to give me an easy way to tell apart dwarves eligible for marriage, but there's no such feature. I have to manually check one dwarf after another. Two squads are full so far.

Constructing the walls was no easy task, and I had to combat demons on several occasions. There was a section of the wall inside a glowing pit with steep walls, which forced me to build a long wooden pathway just for 4 tiles of wall near a demon spawn point. The way there was blocked with an artifact door. First came the ape devils. I drowned them in a tide of war animals. Bringing them all there was time consuming, so when the next time some white snow demons showed up I just had the whole military chop them up. Iden Armorkeys, a hammerlord usually stationed on the surface, was injured then, suffering multiple broken bones. Mosus Zenithposts was also wounded, as if a missing leg wasn't bad enough. Near the end five slug demons showed up, so I just carved fortifications into the walls and shot all but one. The have very few body parts, so shots stand a higher chance of hitting the brain - the only real way to kill an organic demon. And they're butcherable! That's what a fairly small one yields.



Their deadly blood syndrome causes dizziness, pain and rot on contact. Nothing to worry about if animals are affected, and a dwarf would be easily treated should one ever contract the syndrome.

There was a significant surge in minotaur activity. Four attempted to attack the fort - two, Sest Echoscorches the Abyssal Confusion and Rit Minespurt the Willful Strength were captured, two other ones - Lenge Bristledprides the Famous Lash of Hatchets and Öd Sharkmob the Occult Sword of Caves - slain. I wantes to trap Öd, but he ran into a pit and started fighting a bear. The somebody came to drag the bear back where it was and started shooting, and I had to send in the soldiers. Rimtar Groovedpulleys killed him with a single hammerstrike. Lenge was less lucky.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm not sure what to do with the minotaurs now. They're too weak for target practice for soldiers, and civilian militia would likely shoot them to death too fast. Can they breed? I don't think so, but I'd be happy to learn otherwise. At least the elk birds keep hatching, this time even after their mother dies in the nest.

I finally got a decent artifact, courtesy of Kol Bridgedcarnal the Discoveries of Dabbling, a spearmaster of The Livid Flags, who guard the surface - a slug demon leather shield called the Deity of Sinews. It was obviously assigned to her as soon as it was made. It's not very valuable, at only 26040☼, but quite useful. I like to think of it as the sign of Wirejade's future dominion of Hell.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One strike, two fractures? Or am I reading this wrong?

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Pretty much. It fractured the arm's bone as well as the shoulder's bone. Blunt weapons and shields are fairly large, large enough to shatter a shoulder and arm bone at the same time.

[Hetairos]

That's nifty. I suppose the kobold's diminutive size helped. The odd thing is that I don't remember it happening before, and my hammerdwarves killed quite a few kobolds.


I have a few dozen dwarves locked up now, and they're gaining social skills, so they must be using them. I'll see if I can find more of suitable marriage candidates.

[De]

For organizing the military, put them in squads of two and reduce the "minimum soldiers required on duty" to 1 in their schedule. This ought to have them sparring (and thus training MUCH faster than by demonstration) a lot more. Make the squad leaders have the teacher skill, if they have it.

You can always sort them into proper larger squads later

No no no, you'd want to have squads of 3 with it set to train for 2 or 3. Set to 1 would be one Dwarf on their own teaching to their self. Set to 2 or 3 would allow for much larger sparring rates (including on occasion 3 Dwarves sparring altogether simultaneously).

It's a moot point though, since multiple training orders can be given. So you can give 4 training orders for 2 in a squad of 9-10 for example, and it'd have the same effect as splitting the squad into smaller squads.

I've never really figured out how to give commands to individuals in a squad effectively. How do you have multiple training orders for a single squad?

[Sarrak]

All hail to the Hell conqueror! Let's see if dwarf civilization survives an influx of demonic treats and clothes made from overwordly materials. As well as, you know, that damnable 'old age' thing.