The glass-making volcano fortress of Battletrumpets is now in its fourth year. I'm using the population cap to limit immigration waves to 8 or so dwarves, and they only seem to arrive in spring, so my population is currently just 40. I'll keep bumping it up till I hit 80, or there are too many dwarves to comfortably manage, whichever comes first.
Almost all digging so far has been upwards, carving out a fortress inside the second (extinct) volcano cone. I'm using a central staircase design around an open garbage-pit shaft, with four well shafts at the corners. These well shafts go down to my first multi-level cisterns, which in turn are are being slowly filled from three murky ponds above ground. After I drained a pond completely and then watched the rainwater just evaporating before it could get beyond 1/7, I realized the importance of managing the water level in the ponds. The four well cisterns can be isolated from each other with underwater floodgates, and every floor can isolate itself from the central staircase with a moat-and-drawbridge system. Once I sprinkle around a few rooms full of emergency supplies (booze, prepared meals, pick, bucket) the whole thing should be pretty survivable.
Since I haven't breached the caverns yet the only near-term threat comes from the goblins. Unfortunately my militia could soon be outclassed: with no flux on the map I can only give them copper and iron armor, and their bronze axes and swords are only possible thanks to the mountainhome traders. So after I finish digging out the last bedrooms and a hospital floor, I'm going to dig downwards looking for granite and veins of cassiterite. Then my haulers and glassmakers will venture outside to start building a great goblin-sacrificing green-glass pyramid. I just carried out my first ever goblin-drop to get an idea of a lethal height, and discovered that a 13 z-level fall will leave goblin bits splattered up the walls for a couple of levels above ground zero. That should generate a good supply of bones from dismembered limbs, so I'm going to build an atom-smasher at the bottom of the pyramid shaft to get rid of all their clothing, plus an open platform on top to sun-bleach the bones.
By the time all this is ready my legendary child bone-carver should be old enough to work: he's already made a frankly disturbing figurine out of grimeling bone, and I look forward to using him as the basis of a thriving export economy based entirely on goblin bone. The little vulture-loving freak.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6101832 times)