5th Hematite
The militia prepared for the assault. The bridge was lowered, and CptCrunchy and dawnofdarkness walked to the trade depot, with kamikazi and ColdBones covering their back. Everyone was ready to fight, should the Elves attack first.
6th Hematite
They didn't. And so it were our brave warriors, who opened up the fight. With the initiative on their side, they had a clear advantage. The bowdancer could only fire a single arrow, before he found himself in melee. And he didn't last long. But it was neither dawnofdarness nor Cpt Crunchy who claimed the killing blow but kamikazi, who's flying axe bisected the Elf. Now standing alone against four dwarves, the bladedancer didn't last much longer. Cpt Crunchys hammer claimed his life, before our soldiers now engaged the merchants and their pack animals. They were no match and quickly overpowered.
9th Hematite
The Elves had some sent some diplomat to bother me. Thankfully he was taken care of. So I could now use the time to inspect what we had gained from the elven caravan. They had brought a few mithril goods, and even though none of them were of any direct use to us, they would all be smelted, so we could could make some proper gear for our soldiers. Beside that and some plants, there wasn't much of use to be found. Still, when counting the total value of our fortress, we went up from 72000 dwarfbucks to 126000.
I was also informed that our entrance defense system would be ready, it just needed to be loaded with minecarts... Hopefully this is done quick, I really want to see what those masterminds have built here. Or would be a total failure?
13th Hematite
Today was the first testrun of the new defense system. It received the name 'Heartgrinder'.
Sadly the test failed miserably. But after some quick inspection, Arcvasti found the mistake. He was talking about some start ramps being carved wrong. I didn't understand a thing. Most important part of the information was, that it would only take a few days to prepare another run.
17th Hematite
Luror was shouting from the shafts. 'BLOOD' Not another case for our not existant medical staff please, I though, until I realized what he meant... Not dwarven blood. He found a blood of Armok gem!!! Now we seriously need warpstone technology!
19th Hematite
Heartgrinder, testrun #2
Positive:
- the general idea works, some moleweasels tested it for us, one died right away (they don't listne to alertburrows^^)
Negative:
- the carts didn't do the full cycle, we have to fix some corners leading the carts back
Those fixes again should take about a week. So we can hopefully make more dry testruns, before testing it on enemies. Even though considering how bloodsmeared the track is already from those 2 moleweasels... Can hardly call it dry.
25th Hematite
Heartgrinder, testrun #3
Positive:
- another moleweasel got onehitkilled, the system surely has some lethality
- second lane backloop works now
Negative:
- we forgot to fix one ramp, screwing the backloop of the second lane
- first lane minecart jumps track diagonally into the first lane, screwing everything
While the first construction flaw is fixed quickly, the second one is more serious. We actually have to rebuild the launchsystem to prevent this from happening. This will take some time.
1st Malachite
During reconstruction accidentally a minecart was dropped into the Heartgrinder. The good thing was, that it didn't launch into the system, as the launch ramp was already deconstructed. The bad thing was, that one worker got hit by the falling cart.
Even though his wounds are not life threatening, when treated properly, we are lacking any dwarf responsible for medical aid. A quick survey revealed, that only Shadow had some experience with diagnosis, and thus she was declared temporary chief medical dwarf. Our dormitory would double as hospital for the time being.
At least the research on more advanced trap parts was completed. Meph suggested the production of some barbed wires for another kind of trap.
8th Malachite
While Shadow is trying her best to deal with the wounded worker, migrants arrived. But sadly none of them had any knowledge of hospital work. There was one engineer among them, joinning Arcvasti and Meph, but the others were again fairly unskilled in relevant tasks. We would expand our mining corps a bit, and some other standard duties like food industry got some more workers assigned. The only special one out of the new arrivals was a nun. We ordered a shrine for her to be built, so she could follow her passion. This could only help us. In total we are 47 dwarves now. Our growth is certainly not the fastest, but it is steady.
10th Malachite
Heartgrinder, testrun #4
Positive:
- one lane works fine now
Negative:
- Even with the reconstructed launcher, the diagonal trackskipping happens leading both minecarts into the same lane.
Looks like more changes are necessary... Originally we wanted the system to be running by midyear, but it looks like we could fail this goal. At least with all those explenations of the system I'm slowly understanding the idea behind it. We can consider ourselves lucky to have such brilliant engineers and architects around here.
11th Malachite
Now we also have warpstone technology... But to use the tear and blood of Armok it will need even more scientific work.
19th Malachite
The first casualty of Becordobar.
One of the latest migrants had dug into some warpstone while searching for more ore veins and promptly died. Looks like he simply wasn't made for the job.
28th Malachite
All the necessary adjustments to the Heartgrinder have been made. We can launch the next testrun soon.
OOC: I reworked the whole launch design. Just to notice that I'm a huge idiot... there was never a diagonal skipping, the layout I use just creates one long track with 2 lanes and two entry points instead of 2 separate tracks... GNAAAAA Anyway... This may be a problem when shutting down the system, but I think there no immediate problem when running it. And all the reconstruction was probably completely pointless, but whatever, the new one also looks cooler and is slightly more lethal due to increased speed
2nd Galena
Heartgrinder, testrun #5
Positive:
- IT WORKS!!!
- 4 molewaesels were slaughtered
We figured out a few improvements, but those are not urgent. We will leave the design unchanged until autumn and then probably come back to optimizing it. We will reduce the number of exitlanes for the turnoff-process to one, and improve some safety measures to avoid accidents. But overall I'm so pleased with the progress. This masterwork of engineering and construction should help against a lot of potential invaders.
As a lot of common dwarves wondered, how this would work in detail, I asked Meph to create a few illustrations of it:
killlevel (surface -1)
returnpath
OOC: It is just one half, once I have done the finetuning, I will later add a mirror image of it on the other side as well. And then it's shape should also loosely remind one of a heart ^^
15th Galena
Humans! They also send a caravan. But how could we trust them? Weren't it the Humans that sieged Hexxedgarish multiple times? The procdeure was clear. First we would lure them into the trade depot... Then we could decide how to deal with them.
16th Galena
The Humans were ambushed.
By a giraffe. A weregiraffe to be exact. Don't ask me, how they could have missed a giraffe.... However... It was right next to the first caravan wagon when they spotted it.
Like a swarm of flies the caravan guards were rushing at the giraffe. But they could not prevent it from destroying the wagon. The merchants started running, while the guards now completely destroyed the beast. It tried to defend itself somehow, but didn't stood a chance. All it's attacks missed, and the humans struck it again and again without mercy until it was finally dead. Then the guards followed their panicking merchants and ran...
That was truly a short visit. But they had to leave the goods of that one wagon behind! We should have a look at it.
1st Limestone
Half the year is over again. Besides some cowardly Kobold and Goblin thieves nothing more happened after the Humans were gone. The leftovers of the Humans were a bit disappointing, as it was mostly food. But there were a few steel items in between, which could be melted. And every bar counts! For autumn we will do the small changes to the Heartgrinder. Pascale has also started the planning for some better archery positions for our axethrowers.
Author
Topic: V.4h Becordobar - Mastermind Dwarf Challenge (Read 26765 times)