15 Galena, Late Summer.
Human diplomat arrives. Guests to follow, assuredly. A day or so later the merchants are heading in with only minimal problems and with four wagons, that’s a good sign. (Minimal problems because those four wagons are guarded by a squad of riflemen, a reminder of why we’re so anxious to have those volcanic breastplates for their Evil Twins. Talanic still sleeps in his coffin, the Lifemancer is just standing there, more than two weeks later.)
Volcano, the dwarf:
She’s pretty busted up and thirsty. We have doctors and nurses but water is in short supply. There’s a well/pond in the hospital but nobody seems to be filling it. Hmm. I keep double-checking to make sure it’s not a pit but nope, just unfilled. Embarking next to a volcano sure has its advantages but I’m a fan of flowing water, myself. Anyway, I can tell this was a mini-project of a previous Overseer as well because there’s a well on the surface too, in a dry hole.
dryhole:
Those tiles are 2z deep but the problem, shown by the few 1z blue tiles, is that rain just doesn’t fill it up. Doesn’t even wet thoroughly the bottom (and the well was not fireproof so only the chain and parts of it remain thanks to our Eternal Flame artifact). Must be a fairly dry biome although we have bloated tuber seeds and muckroot spawn in the kitchen inventory. So we’ve been working on bringing the one source of water a bit closer; in the SE, there’s a reasonable pond that now has a pump and piping to bring it down one level; there was already a large, cleared and empty area there which is now the new animal area. 1st Granite, all the animals were thirsty and that was a long haul with many buckets to keep ‘em healthy and we want to breed the war animals in any case so, the pump will bring the water a bit closer and the animals are moving from the Depot area down one level and closer to the water. It’s closer to the Hospital also but I’m not sure it’s much comfort to Volcano; she’s unhappy, thirsty and missing her left thigh from a recent ambush. I thought about using the Weather Machine to make it rain forty days and forty nights just to see if it would fill that pit but either I or the dwarves are not smart enough to operate it very well.
18th Galena.
A Gnome diplomat arrives. Six days, the humans are still unloading (?). Two snatchers and another Leprachaun or two come with the Gnome. We lost a baby that way last season but there are enough conscripts now to have at least minimal patrols across the top area. Our best bard, Paper Coridorlash, Guilded, is playing a quickjig – won’t help the slow Humans but at least we’ll be loading faster. The Tavernkeeper/bookie is a greedy sumbitch; for whatever reason, he’s insisting on gold to play dice. Our extra Alchemists are cranking cobalt to silver as fast as they can but it still isn’t fast; I was hoping to have all these new copper coins converted to make mithril for new chainmail. Doesn’t seem to be happening. Steel production is back online with the blast furnaces, one is also alternating with regular smelters on the pig iron and coke.
The ambush: only a half-dozen Orcs this time and they’re coming from the SE, maybe they won’t see the Gnomes on the other side of the hill. And *this* time, I remembered to forbid the suicide charge of dwarves gathering up various articles and bodies. One Orc fell quickly to a cage trap – good, one more for target practice. SloppySeconds are placed on the rise just outside the gate. Damn, I forgot about our activated swordgolem. And Volcano just died of thirst.
We have 15 bifrost bars now, dropped from Frost Giants (thankfully, only the thieving kind in the past six months) but we can’t use ‘em. Road can’t access them from her magmaforge and while we have a blueprint for a Bifrost forge, it isn’t showing on any build menu. It should be under Metalworks or … ?
Well, it’s in the raws but not in our fortress; I’m missing something.
The recruit's charge:
And he bounced off. Ever seen a small dog picking a fight with a large dog?
Guardian:
ooh, I want more of these guys. Our Guardian is busted up, hopping on one leg and still managed to kill the butt of an elite Orc. Of course, once he was down our brave Recruit rushed in and began stabbing him furiously with his =steel pike=. Joined by a craigsboar who also got some shots in. Other Orcs rushing in, time to bring up those new reserves.
Trading:
- It doesn’t take much to make a Gnome ecstatically happy; a few dozen worn out cloaks, some copper swords and we have some clockwork parts and a happy, happy Gnome merchant. They didn’t bring much else. Those slow-to-unpack humans brought a lot of wood (Panopticon? Did you ask for this?) which we’ll use up someday for coke. There’s also a lot of silk and leather – good – and those other 3 wagons were mostly full of many sterling silver candelabras and braziers. Well, whatever. Man, I turn around for two seconds and our broker decides between Gnomes and Humans to go get drunk. Change of broker.
Dynamite bolt to the groin. I saw them in inventory, didn’t realize they’d already been parceled out. Seems not to have gone off; I’ve made a few firecrackers like that myself. Looking at inventory/stocks, I’m surprised any of us are still here after that surface fire.
Orcs have tails?
Four waves of ambush this time, 24 or so but as long as they come in small groups and from different directions, we’re OK. It’s the 80+ sieges that worry me. Still lost two recruits, completely unskilled, slow to learn.
The Elven diplomat has finally agreed to all the paperwork. Seriously beaurocratic, this Elf.
Canyon Saviourbust has been a real disappointment. One of those forges was given over to train her in armor as highest moodable skill past her novice engraver level and for six weeks, she’s been moping, drinking and whatnot – one more copper helm might do it.
FINALLY, our TavernKeeper/Broker stopped with the attitude and is changing copper coins for silver. Or so he says: the menu opened up, tasked x10, waiting to see. Still waiting four days later, it’s like there’s an “open for business” sign, but …
2nd Sandstone.
Lots of stuff, still. Millions of stuffs.
Overflow:
Ah, dammit, turned the pump on and forgot about it. The surface pool is all but drained and we now have a 2z well, a bath house w/ soap and a linked floodgate to drain just in case of syndrome, whatever (that last part was really unnecessary). The cave moss doesn’t seem to grow on the compact peat floors.
Too clever by half:
6th Sandstone. The volcano has refilled pretty much as expected. But those tunnels … I really messed up tapping into them. They filled to 6/7 within only a few days but it’s going to take – my estimate – another year and a half to fill completely. Wow. Has anyone ever had to calculate thermodynamics and fluid flow in a multi-valve system in an engineering class? It’s not hard as much as very time-consuming and this system has 63 valves. The hardcode is going through that each click to determine FPS. If I’d had my head on straight, we’d have tapped into the sides and been finished in those first two weeks. Now, it’s a serious pain to fix; deconstructing workshops above, building walls for support, magma-safe pumps (we made a lot of glass parts, just in case), then channeling down through the new walls. Serious pain. Since I’m handing this off in only another season, I’m going to DFHack (first time!) to put things right. This isn’t really cheating because there’s no dwarf effort involved, no value, just a matter of time on something that’s scheduled to happen anyway. V E R Y slowly. It’s hard to quantify anything else on FPS because this is skewing everything.
7th Sandstone.
Our first Dragon Raptor chicks have hatched. There had been three bad clutches, reminded me of a bad, bawdy chicken farmer joke but we’re now on the way to breeding good warbeasts. Next day, more baby drakes although we really have enough of those.
Road Sand, our weaponsmith at level 13.82, is making a fair percentage of masterpieces. I had other plans so she was diddling with iron shortswords for trade but she’s too good for that. We don’t have mithril (no silver!) so volcanic is not an option. Can’t seem to use the bifrost anywhere so she’s tasked with longswords from Orichalcum. Nearly as good as volcanic and we have 46 bars. Axes are the most dwarfy but longswords seem to do as good a job removing limbs and also have a pierce attack, and our uninvited guests have been coming with better armor.
Now you see them:
And now you don't:
200 or so wooden barrels. We have plenty more and there’s another general stockpile on the far right side. Actually, we have thousands more.
Rock Armorbal, our possessed carpenter has taken a woodshop and is muttering, “bars, blocks, stone, Tree of Life …”. That last one; doesn’t seem to be a prayer for that.
Training begins:
12th Sandstone, mid-Autumn.
Three recruits with zero skills were reassigned to the squad Grimelings. The three caged grimelings have been released. The pit separating them is a brass bridge, retracted. Wooden weapons, steel armor. No shields. Let the games begin! A second training area is being dug to the immediate right because we have all these prisoners, gotta do something with them and our unskilled recruits seem to fall before gaining much experience.
Boar down!
I forgot about pets. Here I was thinking how wussy grimelings are and it punches out a feral pig! And – it seems my recruits are the wussies; next training session will be in full armor, after some time in the infirmary for all those bites and scratches and missing teeth.
16th Sandstone
The invited Elves are back. Let’s see what they brought.
Bannerheart 3, Grimelings 0. Maybe 1/2.
Dwarves were bleeding all over the place. I sent a “real” squad down to finish. The bridge was dropped and they seemed content to stand there and watch – perhaps they found the wooden-armed recruits getting kicked around amusing. They were stationed a bit closer and used their axes to end the first training session.
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Topic: The Banners of Heart: ☼Masterwork the Fortress☼ (Read 34614 times)