I managed to achieve a mostly-sealed-off, self-sufficient fort with the incidental aid of two things: chickens and goblins with very good timing.
Cavern Entrance to ShademinesShademines (Ashmonavuz
, in the dwarven tongue) was founded to be a covert fortress buried deep beneath the southern glaciers. Queen Zulban of Zas Thestkig ordered its creation in order to spy on the ever-wily elves of Ana Amira, who have been expanding into the frozen south at an alarming pace.The main "entrance" to Shademines is bored into the side of the first cavern's wall, on the shores of a massive underground lake that extends off-map. Smuntsu, the monstrous spider that threw many a dwarf to their death with its unnatural elephant's trunk, came from the ocean.
The formerly moss-covered lakeshore has been the center of the fortress' (varyingly-successful) attempts at agriculture. At first, an effort was made to domesticate and breed native cavern wildlife - however, the only breeding pair successfully captured and tamed were a pair of Dralthas, who produced three young before it became clear the beach provided insufficient grazing space. After some regrettable starvation incidents, the remaining three were slaughtered for a very large amount of meat, which, alongside a well built into the lakeside, kept the fortress alive for its first year.
The original party (which has been augmented by a few migrant waves that got in before the Sealing) brought a breeding pair of chickens with them. On a whim, a nest box was ordered and the resulting clutch of eggs was allowed to hatch. These chicks were then allowed to grow up and lay eggs of their own to create a sizable meat supply that could be slaughtered relatively quickly, and did not require grazing space.
Because of various distracting events (see below), however, several more generations of chickens were hatched than intended. Newly-grown roosters were starting to seriously harm one another in the close quarters they were kept, so all adult chickens were designated as available for adoption. Several dwarves had a preference for chickens, interestingly, and many in fact adopted three or four each. Even with occasional chicken casualties to cavern wildlife, these pets seem to cause a multiplicative level of pet-comfort happy thoughts - an axedwarf who had recently been wounded in a battle that saw his wife and child slain felt quite content after being surrounded by the love of his quartet of hens.
Shademines Trading PostAs spring arrived, an elven caravan was foolish enough to route through our territory - a quick seizure of their goods was planned, but never executed, as they arrived at the same time as a duo of goblin master thieves noticed by a chicken loitering around the entrance to the downward shaft. Several elven merchants got shanked and their livestock ran away just as the two greenskins got caught in cage traps.
For three years straight, following that incident, goblin ambushes have arrived at the same time as elven "traders". Even if they are murdering each other, it's never too early to suspect elven trickery.
Surface Entrance to Shademines (at Glacier Surface and Bedrock)Until more cage and spike traps (an early product of Shademines' rich tetrahedrite deposits was an artifact silver trap spike) were installed in the path through the glacier to the actual mineshaft downward, there were often a considerable number of hostile goblin raiders loitering around the surface - until they were inevitably killed off by disappointed human merchants a few months later. This lead to the decision to lock the fortress down indefinitely, except to retrieve the remains of the maimed elven traders and caged goblin raiders, and to discuss the progress of the fort's intelligence gathering with the Mountainhome Liaison.
The First BreachThis is where the mineshaft first reached the lush, fungus-strewn cavern floor. Since it bored lengthwise through a tall pillar of stone, all three exits at the base were sealed with heavy stone doors. The one door occasionally allowed to open was surrounded by stone fortifications and cage traps - never has a surface invader actually penetrated this far, and the cage traps are mainly used on troglodytes that kept trying to climb the mineshaft (until they eventually realized that it lead nowhere but a corpse-strewn glacier).
As it turned out, this segment of the cavern was one of a few narrow passages between the shores of the underground lake (which, surrounded by water on most sides, was largely tamed once it was initially cleared out) and a vast valley in the south. Because of this, a Giant Toad caught early on was given basic training and tied to the fortifications to act as a guard. It proved incredibly resilient, but was eventually killed by a surprisingly-organized group of five troggs acting in tandem. Since then, it's been replaced by a tamed Giant Olm, which looks promising but has not yet actually killed anything.
Passage to the UndervalleyThe Undervalley was briefly penetrated by a few brave hunters (once they finally figured out how to stop looking for game on the barren surface and start taking down the meaty dralthas and cave dogs underground) who discovered a pair of Giant Cave Spiders and Sedme, a humanoid being of pure filth that (alongside the spiders) ensnared many rangers with its poisonous webs. Thankfully, all three went down with enough judicious application of crossbow-armed recruits; relatedly, happiness is up as several more high-quality bedrooms have become free.
Eventually, once a military has been properly assembled from the vast quantities of equipment salvaged from the goblins and elves (the cavern's impressive mineral reserves are mostly native silver and gold with smatterings of tetrahedrite and garnierite), the valley will be tamed, and its thick vegetation will be harvested and made into farms, to solve Shademine's constant alcohol near-shortage.
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Topic: Making a cavern-fort (Read 4191 times)