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[mahrgell]

I thought it would be a calm season... The invaders looked easily manageable...
Then a certain named dwarf decided to spice things up 2 days before end of season...
Need a break now, and then I try to save the dwarf... but I'm not sure that's even possible at this point...

[Meph]

Hopes its not me, that certain named dwarf (Or is it your suicidal incarnation again? )

[kamikazi1231]

Maybe me?  My dwarf seems to have a tendency to rush into melee.

[Tenderroast]

My dwarf get drunk, and try to use his anvil as a mace?

[CptCrunchy]

I'm guessing it's my sparring partner, rushing out to meet the enemies despite having lost an arm

[mahrgell]

Uh... when I wrote that post yesterday... I didn't see the full truth yet...
Have finished the season now and will post the update probably during the next hour...

[mahrgell]

Theme: Everything about the Heartgrinder
Note: I write those updates while playing, so I rarely know anything in advance, and even less often I edit anything I have already written. So my writing will represent my the surprises I had while playing this...

3rd Limestone
The second chamber of the Heartgrinder has also failed. And some Humans are trying to get into the fortress.
Their leader was caught below the trapway but more are coming.

(look at the bridge below the grinder!)

4th Limestone
The trapway is doing work! Several camels and even a few Humans have been killed by the swinging axes and swordwires.

And they are running! They are really running. All of them but the ones from the squad of the captured leader. We will probably drop him onto the spears, and even if he survives... Our ladies will be waiting for him. That should the Humans...

6th Limestone
The royal maceman survived the fall, but only barely...

CptCrunchy finished him off.
As this was not enough to make the remaining Humans flee, the ladies decided to charge into them as well.

After firing one volley without success the Humans tried to run, but even on their camels they were slower then our perfectly trained defenders. And in melee... They didn't stand a chance.

10th Limestone
We are cleaning up the remains of the Humans. The construction of the Seesaw is done, but now the mechanics have quite some work to do.
And I ordered the engineers to propose some changes to the Heartgrinder. We need a better design here! But this will have to wait. For now it has to do as it is.

13th Limestone
Wow, the only casualty of the attempt to retrieve the stuck carts was a moleweasel! Our experience from the last accident has really proven valuable here. The temporary deconstruction of the platinum stopblocks had worked.

3rd Sandstone
Again...


18th Sandstone
MOSEEEEEEEY!!!

How can it happen, that a dwarf dies in the hospital, if there are medics around that have no other work then helping those injured dwarves? This is not acceptable!

16th Timber
New faces at the horizon! Dwarves! Finally we get a caravan and even more important, a diplomat from the mountain homes. This is a good sight!


17th Timber
Damn it... Looks like our favorite friends don't like the caravan. Countless goatriding Tigermen have joined the party. (about 130 attackers total)


19th Timber
The liasion made it in, but the caravan is most likely lost. Too many Tigermen are attacking the few guards, and we can't do much to help them.

21st Timber
The mountain homes are in a bad condition. For this reason they want to prepare the transfer of the capital to Becordobar, and as a part of those measures we will get the title as a barony. There was not much discussion about me being the new baron. Leading was a burden to me, in the beginning. It somehow still is. But I know it is my destiny... We have to make undone what happened at Hexxedgarish. We have to make it better.


22nd Timber
I would say the guards won the battle. But in the end, the Tigermen had the numbers on their side.

Most of the merchants had already fled, but left some goods behind. We can probably use those later. But now, we have Tigermen approaching the Heartgrinder....

26th Timber
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

ColdBones, what are you doing?
Ordered to defend from the southern bastion I just saw him rushing straight into the Heartgrinder. Immediately I ordered the shutdown lever to be pulled, but that most likely won't avoid the disaster approaching... I was shouting at him to come back... But even if he would miraculously survive the carts and we would be able to stop the Heartgrinder... there were still quite a number of Tigermen out there.(70 enemies total, but fairly spread out) Even though many had died, and some had fled... It would be hard to defend against all of them with only 3 dwarves... But we would have to try whatever possible...
OOC: At this point I had to take a break... First for 20 minutes... And then I decided to sleep over it and think how to do it... Seriously... dumb dwarf... This is frustrating but also quite tense at the same time... My explanation is, that due to the activated burrow, the mechanics had tried to go outside with their mechanisms, but cancelled the job. The dropped mechanisms kept the doors to the trapway open. And now somehow ColdBones used dwarven physics and spotted an invader from the inside through the trapcorridor around 2 corners and a ramp in the Heartgrinder... And charged at the enemy... All that while he was supposed to defend the southern bastion

27th Timber
I'm not sure, if it is possible to call anything luck in ColdBones situation... But I would call it luck... When the minecart smashed into him, several bones were broken, and the militia captain was propelled forward... and (thanks to dwarven physics, #2) was thrown off the tracks so no more carts could hit him. Together with him surviving the hit in first place, this were 2 good news.

But there were also 2 bad ones.
First: During the rewiring of the levers, something had gone wrong with the shutdown mechanism. It didn't work when we pulled the lever. It would only a second lever pull to fix, but as we didn't notice the problem right away, it cost us several hours. Even though no more minecarts hit ColdBones, this were several hours delay for the rescue mission by the 3 remaining militia dwarves... (about half a day)
OOC: I only used the Heartgrinder once since the rewiring, and forgot that the levers was in the wrong initial position, so it needed a double pull... But I ordered only one, until I noticed the problem.
And second bad news:

Half a dozen Tigermen were only few steps away from the unconcious dwarf.

But then we noticed something even worse...
We figured out the true reason why ColdBones had rushed into the Heartgrinder... He wanted to save his squadmate, but there was no saving her... kamikazi... had rushed into the Heartgrinder first... But she didn't stand a chance, getting smashed into the platinum walls and driven over multiple times... No one had seen her walk in, except ColdBones, it seems. She was dead... Killed by our own defenses.

OOC: I noticed her death actually at season end... So this paragraph about kamikazi is edited in (from 2 days later) Her combatlog was already gone, but I found her corpse by searching for her weapon... When I made the break yesterday I thought it was only about ColdBones, but at that time kamikazi was already dead (I checked legends, she died one day before) This leads me to a new reasoning for their odd behaviour... I think it is the same as one season ago, when the Humans suddenly ran into the Heartgrinder after shooting the mason on the roof and then losing sight on him... The same thing most likely happened here... They were shooting from the southern bastion, lost sight of the target and tried to chase after it. And the only way out is through the Heartgrinder... I always station them with a move command on the bastion, didn't know that could happen... I'm truly sorry

28th Timber
We need a new award for ColdBones. I just can't decide which one...
maybe 'The luckiest dwarf in Becordobar'? For reasons I can't even imagine the Tigermen next to him decided not to attack him while defenseless. Instead they were running away. It looked like they wanted to flee. Had they misunderstood the accident and the dwarf flying at the speed of sound into the wall as a new dwarven way of attack and got scared? Whatever it was, the ladies reached the crashsite with ColdBones still alive... Only that ColdBones wasn't there anymore
So maybe we should give him the title ' The most suicidal dwarf of Becordobar'? Mosey tried hard to get that one, but in just 2 days ColdBones overshadowed everything Mosey could ever have done... Without a weapon and all his bones broken he charged after the Tigermen...


1st Moonstone
He didn't make it far. His attempts to battle the Tigermen were not exactly fruitful and soon he broke down again.

But while dawnofdarkness went on a killing spree, hunting Tigermen, it was Ct Crunchy who defended ColdBones from any harm.

The Tigermen were now in full retreat mode and slowly we were getting back control of the situation. If we would be able to carry the suicidal captain back into the fortress and the doctors would not let him dehydrate, he would most likely survive... we hope.
With the loss of kamikazi the fortress had suffered enough. She was one of the four defenders we had... We couldn't afford to lose another one. And kamikazi would have to receive a proper tomb...
With all those bad news on our side, we didn't care much about the fate of the caravan. Almost all it' members were dead by now. We could probably get a lot of loot from it, but that wasn't important right now.
Similar were our feelings about the new forge area being finished, Usually this would have caused great joy among the dwarves, but now? There was no room for joy at the moment.
OOC: I will give kamikazis kill list etc once her tomb is done. I think I can do this during the winter.

[Tenderroast]

Rest in Pieces, Kamikaze.

[Meph]

So your entire ranged squad is incapacitated?

[mahrgell]

ColdBones still has a wooden round shield, which he uses from time to time to bash some opponents!
so I would say, we are at 25% efficiency of the ranged squad
But the Tigermen are mostly gone or getting killed by the ladies... So as soon as I can let the medics work on ColdBones we can try to get him back... Actually the number of injuries listed (prediagnosis) right now is quite low, so they may fix him until Obsidian. Or infect him and kill him ^^

I'm just thinking how to replace kamikazi
a) namewise :kamikazII or a new name
b) dwarfwise :teach some hauler, hope for some new migrant, or maybe use the Icemage lvl3
c) weaponwise options are: icemage, javelins, axethrower, some elvish bow (are they any good?), musket

I do not really like the idea with the icemage, but it is surely an option. In any case, the replacement will not be done right away. kamikazi deserves some more time to be remembered and can't be replaced that easily!

[CptCrunchy]

Is it possible to use dfhack to rename objects? If so I vote ColdBone's shield is renamed Kamikaze

The elvish Greatbows are really good ranged, I use them for my orc ranged squads, with mixed singing arrows looted from elves and broadheads

[mahrgell]

2nd Moonstone
The ladies had done a good job in clearing the area. Now we finally could let the civilians back outside. And it was the smith, who did the most urgent task:


3rd Moonstone
It times of sadness even the arts suffer...

How uninspired...

5th Moonstone
There is still one merchant and his auroch bull left in the area... Both are making strange noises and not moving. But their presence keeps us from claiming all the stuff left behind by the caravan... Why can not some thief just... stab them...
At least we are now officially a barony. And I'm the new baron!


7th Moonstone
ColdBones got diagnosed today. He will require about 20 treatments.. But even worse.. He already caught an infection. I hope he somehow makes it...

23rd Moonstone
The confused merchant and his auroch bull finally left...

21st Opal
While kamikazis tomb is nearing completion, ColdBones has been released from the hospital. He is still full of bruises and some bones are not set perfectly, but he is back in training. But he has caught more infections... And Mosey told me, that the sargeants recuperativ powers and disease resistance is surely not the best. I can not completely follow this logic, considering he is walking around with a missing groin for years, and survived the last incident as well... but have to trust the doctors... Even though I hope they are wrong on this one.

15th Obsidian
New enemies!

Some hauler spotted an Pandashi ambush... Sadly the Seesaw is still not ready. I was told, that only about 35 mechanisms were missing, but this surely wouldn't be done this year then. But even without it working, we had floored over the old entrance, so now every enemy has to pass through the Seesaw first.
But for now, it was most important to get everyone in. There is still so many items lying around from the last battle... more then 2 months were not enough for our haulers to collect all the stuff.

18th Obsidian
Surprisingly really everyone made it in. The pandashi are now in the Seesaw. Even though it is hard, after what had happened, we decided to pull the lever again... Start the Heartgrinder.

23rd Obsidian
After they lost half a dozen men, the Pandashi gave up and turned away. But we would keep the Heartgrinder activated. No one knows how many more ambush parties may be out there...

1st Granite
The year is over! It looks like the Pandashi were the only attackers during winter. After the mess of last season this is a welcome change. Now the haulers could be left outside again, hopefully not getting surprised by another ambush party.
Looking back at the year, it wasn't a good one. Not only had the surge of migrants stopped, but over the course of the year we had probably more then a dozen dwarves, mostly haulers that got caught by invaders and miners, that died to coal and warpstone. But especially painful were the death of kamikazi and the severe injuries of ColdBones during late autumn, both inflicted by our very own constructed defenses, the Heartgrinder. ColdBones had not entirely recovered yet, but was already trying to practice again. Still, his infections were a huge risk for his life. We just had to pray for him.

And kamikazi? She would now be guarding the entrance of the fortress for all eternities.

High above the Heartgrinder, the place of her death, she was now resting, looking down through the fortification onto these lands, with all her equipment around her. She died, being crushed into a platinum block, and now the top and the door to her tomb would be sealed with platinum. And in the slab next to her sarcophagus, all the foes, she had struck down, were inscripted.


17 enemies in total, including the only Great fiend spider ever seen and killed here at Becordobar.
We will all miss kamikazi...

But this weren't all the bad news of the year. We had now encountered almost all the races in the world, and it was quite obvious... They were all hostile towards us. To make things worse, when we faced the Humans during summer, the Heartgrinder had shown some severe problems, which could cause the unintended collapse, leaving our fortress almost undefended, and posing a great danger for dwarven lives during the repair works. Reconstruction of the Heartgrinder would be needed at some point. Surprisingly the defect had not happened when the Pandashi were beaten, but we can't take any risks. This would be one of the prime goals of the coming year.

But when we talk about construction, we also have to talk about advances of last year. The Seesaw of Armok, our new defense system, has been fully constructed. With the outside work being disrupted quite often and being dangerous in general, it had taken us a considerable amount of time. Also more then two third of the mechanisms had been placed, and we expect it to be fully functional during the first half of the year, maybe even in spring. Then we can finally do the final tests before we show our inventions to all dwarvenkind.... and our enemies.
(OOC: I'm sure I misconnected some links, misdirected some tracks, or screwed some bridge construction )
But there was more. The sunsail had 3 almost fully roofed floors by now. The second one was now housing the metal industry, finally cleaning up most of the central plaza from workshops. The first one was empty, and I haven't even found a way into it... They walled it all off, but for some reasons there are multiple closed drawbridges visible from the outside. But all my questions to Pascale about it's meaning were left unanswered. What is he planning?

And the third floor was now my new temporary throne room (and bedroom and dining room and tomb...) As a baron I can no longer sit down there in the mining shafts, doing all the paperwork. I asked Pascale to build me some proper rooms, and he promised me to prepare some designs for it.

This were probably enough goals for the coming year, but surely, many more urgent things would arise. One of the few things that had gone well this year is the booze production. We surely wouldn't  feel thirst this spring.

And as the liaison from the mountain homes made it back well, we hope for new migrants this year...

[mahrgell]

I updated the first post with the legends mode battle logs, but for the regular readers here is a copy:

The numbers given here are lower then in the story for the simple reason that legends mode ignores mounts. But almost every attacker rides something, and quite often the mounts are as dangerous as the riders...

Spoiler: year2 winter: Dark Stranglers are no match for ColdBones (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year3 summer: Tigermen meet dawnofdarkness (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year3 autumn: Ferric Elves test the Heartgrinder (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year3 winter: Cpt Crunchy saves onearmed dawnofdarkness from the Drow (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year4 spring: Tigermen vs Heartgrinder (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year4 summer: Tigermen vs Heartgrinder #2 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year4 autumn: The empire strikes back... or not (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year4 winter: Some (Tigermen) will never learn it (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year5 spring: The unseen Goblin attack (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year5 spring: Furies can fly but not fight kamikazi (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year5 summer: Humans - The Heartgrinder fails, but the militia doesn't (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year5 autumn: More Tigermen, the big caravan mess and death of kamikazi (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: year5 winter: Halfassed Pandashi meet the Heartgrinder (click to show/hide)

[Meph]

Its funny how they have "killed by a vehicle", but also "bled to death, slain by a minecart". As if these things are different.


Btw, furies are broken, the AI for flying invaders is... not so good, to say the least. Its the reason I deleted batmen as cavern invaders.

[kamikazi1231]

Thank you for the amazing tomb.  By chance did my dwarfs child survive?  It could grow up, take the family name, and avenge me haha.