I've been playing DF for quite some time, but I've never gotten a decent melee artifact weapon (I've gotten a few good ranged ones). I don't use burrow restrictions or forbid materials to influence what's created, partly because I like to be surprised, but mostly because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to fine tune strange moods. When I saw that lead was the first material taken to the forge my heart sank. My last melee artifact was a turkey bone axe and the one before that was a silver sword
. I was really starting to rethink my hands-off approach to artifacts. Then the RNG blessed me with this:
Talinabras Gishgilutir "Drumseer the Contemptible Loot" a lead mace
This is a lead mace. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with rose cut tanzanites and round gabbro cabochons and encircled with bands of lead, oval cobaltite cabochons and saguaro rib wood. This object menaces with spikes of goblin bone and dolomite. On the item is an image of ashes in dragon bone.It's no
PrideUnited, but lead is still denser than silver, so this will do
.
The one thing I did influence was the choice of bone. The goblin bones were the last of any type in my fortress at the time, so I selected two alpacas to be butchered. I totally forgot about the dragon that was recently slain. The dragon corpse and the alpacas were within sight of the butcher's shop at the same time, so I spared the alpacas for another day.