Chapter 1 of Dustcrypt:or "how a warlock apprentice witch left her mentors tower with dreams of undisturbed research in her own tower without knowing what to do at all. and the struggle with a few other runaways to keep a vampire from killing everyone, a ghoul from stealing the lumber skeletons axe and trying to
tell skeletons that they cant build a wall on a floor."
(no promises of more "chapters")--------------------------------
end of year 2 (at 1/2 calender speed taking it pretty slow overall) and still no anvils in my first warlock "tower" named Dustcrypt (well more a walled off dust-shack at the moment)
apart from the total lack of anvils it goes relatively well overall as i am now up to over 30 "people", well 24 skeletons, 3 ghouls, 3 warlocks and a vampire who came in the 2nd migrant wave. (embarked with 1 witch, 2 ghouls (one died pretty quickly trying to kill wildlife) and 4 skeletons + bit of food, drinks, wood, and seeds... no anvils. had a few prisoners that got "butchered" quite quickly by the ghouls.).
the vampire drained 3 other warlocks so far till i threw all prickleberry and strawberry wine away and just switched to making bloodwine now, sorry other warlocks... no prickleberry wine for you anymore.
combat wise there isnt that much going on so far.
had 2 waves of lemurs trying to steal whatever is lying around.
2 kobold snatchers (?) tried to get in, but didnt get far as the random skeletons and ghouls running around noticed them and they just ran away.
i guess "the freezer" ... whatever it was, some dwarf hunting freezing something that was hidden and bumped into a skeleton at some point was the most "interesting" being that arrived so far (apart from the hungry vampire migrant)... but he ran away too pretty quickly... it probably was heading elsewhere in its search for dwarfes.
there was one more combat event where around 5 zombies tried to kill a giant boar (it was something like a boar at least, forgot the name of it). for weeks they just punched and shaked eachother around.
then i send WAR over to deal with the "annoyance" (weeks long combat+ soundsense)... fresh equipped in leather and a... rock... staff. yeah that is the best we can make so far haha.
but instead of throwing spells he just walked over and began to bash the boar too.
(i think in the end the ghoul with the axe killed it... not sure how the boar died actually)
WAR is the vampire by the way.
more appointed so he dies off somewhere in combat at some point and doesnt drain every warlock off their blood, not because of any sort of combat skill as like mentioned he doesnt even know how to to use a staff properly... who knows... maybe he was hungry for blood and just rushed over to bath in the bloodpool of zombies and boar. *shrugs* vampires... probably needs proper combat/spell training later.
well at least he seems to be relatively calm now since i changed the distillery + farm plots i had into a bloodwinery. maybe at some point i give him his own area/burrow to deal with blood drinking and rebuild the "normal" straw- and prickleberry wine production again.
even though the blood production is way easier than farming for plants to brew... the usually ~10 zombies i have running around the "tower" usually kill enough random wildlife to always have a ton of meat (think i am at ~300 meat now) and bodyparts around for now.
Building a proper "tower" isnt that easy either, but I dont just want the warlocks to live under the earth. Digging rooms/hallways is way easier than building upwards buildings. Especially the roof and 2nd floor are a bit of a pain.
The ethereal gates really help much in getting red blocks (the now overseer witch i embarked with likes the red ethereal stone and as she is the overlord everything is made of red blocks for now.)
i did roof off a part of the main area but i need to rip off the floors again where i want to build walls for the rooms for the 2nd floor as both floor and walls are constructions.
so construction of the "tower" currently is rather slow... got a bunch of 9x9 size "rooms" in the main level (well one actual room that is used as dorm and dining room), but then expanded here and there with workshops and stockpiles etc and then just walled everything in.
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here some screenshots of how Dustcrypt currently looks like:
the main map, a 5x5 embark:
http://i.imgur.com/wNxTRaG.jpgnothing really too outstanding on it... just a little stream in the north east and a little hill in the south west. both not used for anything.
oh the 10x10 "pit" you can barely see in the east on the lower ground (that black box) is just chanelled out on the surface. i planed to make quarry there for rock blocks.. but the gates work way better so there is just a 1z level pit with ramps down left from that idea. maybe i can use that later for something (side house for the vampire? but he is "calm" now with the bloodwine so far. maybe a entrance to a lower dungeon guarded with animated weapons and traps leading underground to the actual tower entrance... *shrugs*)
the main "tower":
http://i.imgur.com/t731YAb.jpg-in the north part were the straw- and prickle berry farm plots and now is the blood winery. south of that is the kennels room that just got used to war train the embark animated bonesaw.
and east of the blood winery is the room with the ethereal gates, block stockpile and the stairway down to the tombs. really small ones for ghoul/skeleton leaders, medium ones for the warlocks for now and one big one for the overlord.
Tomb area:
http://i.imgur.com/7uF2kco.jpgnot really doing anything underground, just digging out the tombs and a few paths to find ores. no caverns or anything interesting yet down there.
-in the east part we have the "resource stockpile" with a necromancy circle in it for emergency undead. and in the room next to it is the soul siphon, butchery, tanner, leatherworks, leather stockpile and the necrotic circle to create skeletons and zombies.
-in the west we have a bigger "room" with most of the workshops... most not even used that much. crematorium in the top corner, slag smelter south of it, in the top corner stockpiled for armor/weapons/ammo (mostly just bone bows, bone spikes for traps, leather armor and bone arrows) and near the lake is the smelter (to finally make anvils at someday). a few wood and stone stockpiles were set up next to the carpenter/mason/crafts workshops (not much used either atm, mostly for wooden barrels/bins, the few starter stone blocks for the first gate and rock crafts i made in hope to trade them for an anvil... well the depot got dismantled after a year).
bottom left we have a gemcutter shop (marked for removal, just checked if i can make an anvil there), a bigger tailor shop that might replace the leather works at some point and some engineers chambers that i use to make serrated red ethereal spikes form blocks for traps.
and above the ponds we have a bowyer (for bone bows), bone carver (for bone mechanisms for traps) and a bone Fletcher for bone arrows and quivers + the food stockpile full of meat, bloodwine and tallow, i think some seeds from the farm are still somewhere in that pile.
-to the south we have the entrance rooms leading to a graveyard (that might get moved north where the plant fields were before the bloodwine switch.) and around the corner to the "resource stockpile" doors and main room doors (had a mandate to make armor stands, so gated them over and placed them in the entrance room.)
-and in the middle we have the main rooms... from the top the stairway to the 2nd floor and the dormitory/dining room/"shack", south we have the "makeshift barracks" where whoever doesnt have anything to do hangs out in, and south of that is the entrance room with a well over the pond in the corner.
-planed for the 2nd floor are currently rooms for every warlock and the throne room. (takes forever to floor over/wall rooms)
2nd floor:
http://i.imgur.com/IDYA1eq.jpgnot much to see... delayed flooring over the main areas and currently ripping out floors to place walls and roofing over in the 3rd floor. (stairs to the 3rd floor to the right)
-planed for the 3rd floor is the library and other magical related stuff.
-the higher the tower goes the more "high tech" stuff will get placed up. (probably)
-defense wise there isnt really anything yet, i am producing bone spikes and mechanisms and probably will place some infront/behind doors and in the south entrance hallway. maybe i build a 2 tile walkway all around the 2nd floor and station some skeleton archers on a ring patrol on there. and maybe a little tower in the south east corner where currently the graveyard is to cover the entrance with archers.
-also as you can see there are still trees in the walls... at some point my lumber skeleton lost his axe (the copper axe and pick are the only 2 tools i have from embark) and a ghoul got hold of it. it probably happened when i changed around the military.
now the one witch from embark is the overlord with the other warlocks assigned under her and the named skeletons (from embark/migrant waves) too under the overlord "squad".
then the vampire is WAR on himself, one named skeleton leads all the created shambling skeletons in a archer group and the 3 ghouls are usually together in their own group somewhere in the tower. (mostly butchering the remains that come in, but sometimes building a floor or ripping out a floor)
once we have offices the other warlocks will get the other noble positions.
and the other "horseman" positions will probably be filled way later with fitting spellcasters or really good skeletons/ghouls.
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its 2 years in and the materials we use are bones and leather... leather for armor (around 70% of the "tower" is equipped in leather armor) and the bones for bone arrows and bows for the shambling skeleton group.
i cant make much else... well i have some rock mage staffs, but no bone knifes/swords for skeletons or magestaffs/wraithblades or even leather whips for the ghouls, as they all require 2 anvils for the bone forge.
first i thought could build the throne room and raid places to get attacked and then melt down the metal from the attackers to smelt anvils. but that idea got thrown away quickly as i didnt even had bows and leather armor really started yet. also the wall wasnt even done back then.
then i remembered that i could actually dig ore for metal and apparently i can smelt an anvil in the smelter.
but the digging skeleton doesnt realy dig out the tomb area currently... i probably should take him off of masonry/construction for now so he can dig out the tombs and dig around more for some ore.
so i concentrated more on creating zombies and skeletons for a while to actually get some construction done. rooms for warlocks are badly needed for example. i also build 2 more ethereal gates now and with the 3 gates we have more then enough materials for that.
once i get 2-4 anvils done everything should work more smoothly. iron bone industry seems to be really "easy" to get going full speed rather quickly with just bones and ash to get everyone equipped.
after that we can concentrate more on research... a library would be next for spell research. and at some point an ebonglass industry (ebonglass also a favorite of the overlord same as the red ethereal walls) but that seems more on the difficult/late game side with obsidian.
well who knows where the research leads into...
for now as short term goals (1-2years) we have:
-2nd floor rooms for warlocks, offices, throne room + more fortifications/traps
-finding some ore for boneforge and corrupted forges
-iron bone production
and as long term goals (2-10+ years) we could look into:
-a library and research into spellcasting.
-animated weapons, as we got one animated war bonesaw as overlord guard and a animated pitch fork and scourge someone has as pet. Note: maybe they can be used as guards.
-wisps, as one of the souls we tried to "store" "transformed" into what we now call a wisp... we are not really sure why that happened yet, but more research will go to wisps once we have a library and alchemy setup. for now it seems to usually float around in our "shack".
-vampirism, the vampire we have is still a bit of a mystery.
-death, we have 3 dead warlocks in the tombs and it might be possible to reanimate them. probably needs gathering of "living volunteers" from nearby villages. Note: the vampire and ghouls might be willing to go out there at night to bring back research samples.
-research further into skeletons. for now controlling the few skeletons we have isnt a problem... but once everyone has their own rooms and does their own studies we might run into problems controlling them properly. Note: maybe instead of increasing numbers there are other ways to instead strengthen the current skeletons.
-research into ebonglass as material.
but if the luck i had with the succubi continues (the 2 forts i had ended both in tantrums after sieges) i probably get sieged by steel armored macedwarfes any moment now.
and a few of them probably can bash their way through the whole "dustshack"
(maybe i should turn on some easy fortress defense races next time, think i still remember getting sieged by werewolves(?) in some genesis mod years ago)
so the next years probably will get interesting. there is lots to do and its pretty interesting finding out what and how stuff works in a new civ.
