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Kill the king, but leave queen consort and relatives be.

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Murder the king and his wife, leave other members of their family alive.

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Kill'em all!

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[Grimmash]

Prelude – Journal of  Grimmash, mid 135

It has been some time I have called this place, Chamberdrums, my home.  I arrived in 128, and have now lived among my brethren for 8 long years.  For a year, the year 130, I was given overseership of this fortress.  Now it seems it is again my time to lead. 

The Cabal seems a distant memory most days.  We strived so hard to forge our new home that our original purpose, revenge on those who sent us here, has been lost in the face of goblin attacks, the endless hordes of undead, the titan and the beasts in the caverns below.  In my life, I have taken a wife, and fathered four children since I walked through the gates and weathered the first desperate nights.  In many ways we have already won our great battle.  Chamberdrums is home to over 200 souls, a flourishing city beneath parched plains.  But our work is not over, not yet.

While I have been lulled into a content life, working the stone and becoming a skilled clothier, there is a hole that has not been filled.  We must bring those responsible for this fortress into our fold.  We will entice them with riches and luxury.  Once they are content, at peace with our fortress, we will strike.

1st Granite, 136

Ruhn came and found me at my mason’s bench, and told me he was tired of running the fort, and as has started to become a tradition, he was passing leadership back to me.  I told him I had already spent one long year leading our fortress, but that was probably just about the right amount of time.  He insisted I take the job, and so, I put down my hammer, and began to walk the halls, relearning the paths of Chamberdrums.   These halls have grown so much since my term as overseer six years ago.

I took a tour of the fortress, to get a feel for how things have changed while I have been toiling away.  The first job I will try to tackle is getting this flooded basement sorted out and some new magma forges created.  We don’t have much access to trees on this barren hill, but we have tons of ore lying about.  Hopefully new forges will allow us to properly arm and armor our entire militia with iron and steel.

3rd Granite

What in Armok’s Beard?!  Someone threw a goblin lasher into a room that has been walled off, and now the thing is chasing a vampire around and causing no end of distractions.  I’m going to toss some armor down there to make an army of one to deal with this stupid goblin.

5th Granite

Our vampire has defeated the lasher.  I’m not sure when this occurred, but the fiend is also our mayor.  Armok’s will works in mysterious ways.  The door to his room is even walled off, from old schematics I can find, so I have no idea how he got elected in the first place…

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7th Granite

Our efforts in the basements are moving along.  I set up a few pumps and ordered the miners to dig down above the magma, to cast obsidian around the precious metal and keep our brethren safe from accidental flooding. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just as the water started pouring and warm obsidian was forming around the adamantine, a second liason from the Mountainhomes came, and wants to promote us to a barony.  I will recommend Monitor Lisard.  I called the cabal together to help decide, and the vote was widely split.  As acting overseer the decision ultimately falls to me.  He has led the cabal and the fortress through hard times, so the duplicitous honor should fall to him.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

28th Granite

Our Barony is confirmed.  I have order tremendous increases in our crafting workshops in order to speed our elevation in the eyes of the murderous King.  The sooner we lure him here, the sooner our slumbering dream of revenge can awaken. 

Our lava casting is continuing, and our new Magmaworks to the east are underway.  It is slow going, as the miners continually cease working due to fears of the lava spilling forth.  I think the previous flooding catastrophes have planted the seeds of fear in them, but we shall persevere.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

15th Slate

We finally dug out the first layer of adamantine, and are preparing to cast around the second layer.  I am consulting with our masons and architects to try and create a large reservoir to direct water into the magma sea, and hopefully pump some lava out to prevent loss of the precious adamantine to the lava floes beneath the first layer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

3rd Felsite

It was brought to my attention that many of our brethren are dressed only in tatters.  I have requested that we step up production of clothing to give our fellows more decent clothing to wear.  While busy attending to the obsidian casting apparatus and the dangers that will entail, I hope new clothes will bolster the spirits of our fortress, and provide some distraction from the increased workloads from all my production requests.

12th Felsite

Elves have arrived, along with a siege of goblins hot on their heels.  I told Grim to go man the towers, and we would send someone else to trade in his stead.    He seemed none too displeased by the thought of shooting the goblins, and hurried off.  Grim took the East Tower, and Maskwolf took her squad to the West tower.

The goblins closed, and Grim’s squad felled a good number of them.  Maskwolf found me in the halls and there was a bit of an incident.  Apparently our bolt stocks have fallen low yet again.  I honestly do not understand how we are always so short of bolts.  I was afraid that  Maskwolf was going to lay me out, her fury was so great.  I told her I was going down to the forges immediately to see if any metal could be found to begin immediate production of bolts.  Despite the copious number of corpses in our disposal room, none were suitable for bone bolts, and all the wood had been used up on crafts to trade back to the Mountainhomes.

20th Felsite

With the lack of ammunition readily available, I decided to test the improvements to our traps and entrance.  Once we had isolated the elves and locked all the doors, we opened the gates with the goblins massed outside.  Out traps made short work of them, and the remaining stragglers, a few trolls, were cut down by our militia without much more than bruises.  One goblin remains trapped in a cage in the warrens beneath the fortress, but all the others are dead.  Hopefully we can collect the armor from our foes, and melt it down into bolts for the marksmen.  I sent Maskwolf a note explaining this.

OOC:  No one will haul any ore anywhere.  It's really bizarre.  I've tried moving stockpiles, unforbiding everything in the fort, stopping all dumping jobs, and I even tried using the orders menu to forbid minerals, then unforbid them.  Anyone run into this before?

[4maskwolf]

Are the stockpiles "Take from links only"?

[Ruhn]

Personal Diary of Nuckles
The vampire is still alive, and ready to kill again.  Somedwarf threw him some equipment and the second goblin was dead soon after.  The blood sucker then used his connections to fix the election and become Mayor again!  When I get a chance I'll go down and toss that sword master goblin into his room and see if that finishes the job.

On the bright side, a fresh gang of those empty head greenskins met their death on the battlefield.  Their gang leader must be heartless as well as stupid to keep sending his soldiers to us.

---   ---
OOC:
Nice work getting at the adamantine.  We have plenty of safety in place in case a hollow spot is found.  I ordered hatch covers but forgot to place one on level -49.
I also may have forgotten to share that bone stocks are still very low, I've had to kill our animals every time there was a strange mood.

Are they not refilling the original stockpiles on the wood-burning forge & smelter level, or new ones down by the magma forges?

Edit: BTW another great pic, Lizard.

[Grimmash]

OOC:

I pretty much deleted all the none-magma forges and stockpiles for bars and ores.  I want it all down by the "free" smelters and furnaces.

I was trying to set up a little dump stockpile at the top of the chute, then realized that I needed to move ore to build the wall.  So I zoned a bunch of stockpiles, tried all the combinations of give and take, then just gave up and ordered all metals to be smelted on repeat.  Seriously, I spent like half an hour last night and again this afternoon on it.  Sometimes basic DF eludes me, I guess. I'll solve the problem by smelting it!

As for bolts, I swear I am going to turn every piece of metal below iron into goddam bolts.  I'm sick of alpha squad storming in to the rescue, and Maskwolf's getting stationed with just a few shots.

I am planning on building a magma failsafe in case of HFS breaching.  I can fit it in thematically anyway, as I plan to pump out portions of the magma sea around the spire, drain them off map, and cast the whole spire.  It's tedious, but I'm going to make it work.

Oh, voting should probably start now for who gets what sort of shiny blue armor.  Breastplates?  Full suits?  Whatever the hell I feel like?

[4maskwolf]

Let me remind you that maskwolf will be EXTREMELY annoyed if others get shiny blue stuff and she doesn't.  Just sayin.

I'll write a journal entry or something to this effect later.

[Grim Portent]

Is it possible that bolts are being used to hunt and train still? I know that one or two dwarfs were hunters in my turn and I'm pretty sure someone must have set up an archery target by now.

[4maskwolf]

I set up targets on my turn but didn't assign any squads to them.

[Ruhn]

I assigned all the targets to squads during my first turn (3 years back).
I guess if everyone in Grim or Maskwolf's squad is good enough as-is we can turn off training and add a third squad of future marksdwarves to use the targets?

Lizard had suggested using some for furniture to increase happiness of the common dwarf.
According to the Armor SCIENCE I'm not sure if adamantine chain shirt or breastplate is more effective.  At least it is light and shouldn't slow down our shooters.  Melee squads can probably make due with steel.

Impressive engineering, I wasn't going to bother pumping magma unless it was needed for the forges somehow.

[Grimmash]

To answer a few things: 

I disabled all hunting ammo.  We have enough food, and space for as many farms as we care to make.  I'll check all the Archery targets.  We get enough practice on sieges, and with the central tower, we can just move the two squads around between the three as needed.

The dining room has been improved.  Additional furniture should be easy to make, and will increase the value of the fort, so I'll get cracking on that.

As for armor, I think I'll go with mail shirts, as we'll get the most bag for our buck that way.  I'll try to make sure named characters get the blue stuff first.  I'm not great at managing military outfits, so we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully I can cast through a few layers of the spire.  It is a somewhat massive operation, but with the reservoir almost done, the casting system really just requires careful planning.  The hardest part will be pumping out lava fast enough to cast under the overhanging z-levels.  I want to try and not dump a bunch of adamantine onto the semi-molten rock under the lava.  Yeah, we could eventually cast down to it, but if I cast out bounding walls, that should make it a little easier to go level by level.

[Monitor Lisard]

If you remembrer, I designated a single-tile refuse dump on a top of the ore tunnel. It is covered with a retracting bridge. If you assigned ores for dumping, you may find them there. Actually, if the bridge is retracted, said ores might have been dumped into the shaft which leads to the flooded magma smelter.

[Grimmash]

Yeah, that wasn't working either.  I took it apart.

I think I may go through and try to figure out where all the dump zones are.  There are dumps into the vamp room, there was that dump you mentioned, and I used to have one.

Does anyone care if I dispose of the massive number of corpses?  We have lava, and no real use for some 600 bodies...

[Grim Portent]

600? That's a lot of dumping.

[Monitor Lisard]

It should be done as soon as possible. We don't want wandering necromants to discover this kind of "treasure".   

[Grim Portent]

It occurs to me to wonder, is the monarch of our civ married? If so then we could build an arena, try to catch a necromancer and have ourselves a little spectacle.

[Grimmash]

Whew, I think most of my turn will end up being working on casting the spire to extract maximum blue stuff.  Work progresses on a lot of fronts.  I'm thinking you'll get a partial update before the weekend, then the final update after that.  This depends on getting the vampire fort running.  If I manage that, then it might be more spaced out.