Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[hjd_uk]

I'm channelling out the floors of a pit to throw captured enemies in, carefully as possible, and of course it just has to collapse, killing or disabling all of my miners and about 10 other dwarves. I don't even know how it happened, there's just some hole that goes all the way to the bottom of the pit, as if an elephant had stood on the top and caused the floor to collapse. Apparently the dwarves in the cave-in were 'boiling in magma' at some point, even though there's no magma anywhere near it. Maybe hot dust.

I'm channelling out the floors...

Did you just designate a volume of blocks to be channeled out / start channeling several carved out rooms?
Dwarves are not smart enough not to channel out a big square of floor in the middle empty space...

[Eric Blank]

Log of Captain Dorf, Militia Captain
Everything's going well, despite the siege. I've locked down the fort, covering every entrance I believe. If I'm mistaken, however, we all die. Our soldiers are mostly unarmored and unarmed at the moment.
I keep telling Zulban we need a good magma pump to just torch the invaders but no, we don't have the resources or pumping capacity to build one, even with the volcano just below ground level. We don't have a source of running water either, so for no we're stuck with some runoff from the ponds every year in tiny reservoirs.
112 dwarves just wont save us. all the booze in the world won't make these fools remotely decent soldiers, and we just dont have the materials for weapons and armor. If the ogres get in, we'll be dead.
I was very thorough in locking down the place though, given the length of time the ogres are willing to just sit there and make a big yellow spot on our lawn before actually attacking.

Damn Ogres.
Somebody spotted a wild dragon approaching from the top of the stack. It wandered up to our entrance and got it's ass handed to it on a silver platter, causing no injury to the three ogres standing outside our tunnel. A nice old female too, forget her name but she was a heavyweight killer among the local populations. Woulld have been a grand addition to our dining hall, and made us very famous, if there were a cage trap left unoccupied in there. The marksmen say they so far haven't had a chance at the ogres yet because they're at the opposite end of the hall, out of sight.
The ballistas are in range and have LOS but the operators are terrible and can't load the things properly to fire in a straight god damn line. Even our high master operator is firing most shots into the wall at 40 degree angles to the target. What the hell!?

Dear Armok one of the operators' children just walked in front of the ballista during operation. The arrow tore a whole straight through the center of her torso! Shes dead!
How are you still happy? You just shot your child!

I'm informing the mayor of this! Married women must not be operating the siege batteries!
Apparently the mayor is most concerned that we couldnt find the junk to complete her mandate, so she sent her boyfriend, the head smith, to prison for a month.

[Zaroua]

Well my military's been training for 10 years. I have 2 axelords left, 5 swordmasters, 7 hammerdwarves, 7 elite marksdwaves and 2 mace lords, all decked out in blue metal. Time to clean up my caverns - there's about 10 FBs down there.

So I start with cavern 3: 4 FBs, no casualties except those stupid peasants who rushed to pick stone and died to one of the FBs with deadly blood - guess I had forgotten to remove the stone stockpile near my catapult training area.

I let my military rest up for a month, then I go to cavern 2 and I keep my macedwarves out of the fight "just in case". I open up the cavern, station my 21 dwarves inside and build a wall to seal the cavern up "just in case". Queue in Soshosh, a not so though insectoid FB with Deadly Dust (and another FB made out of vomit - my military actually ended up killing 2 FBs at the same time). My military easily dispatches both FBs with no casualties so I proceed to unseal the cavern. While the wall is being deconstructed, I inspect my military and notice something's wrong. Very. Very. Very. Very. Very wrong.

But hey, the cavern I fought in is used as a water source for my hospital - in other words the hospital is about 40 squares away from my military with plenty of beds, soap, a dedicated medical staff, 20 wells, a ramp with water at the entrance to wash off dwarves coming in and a another ramp in front of my row of wells so that dwarves that give water clean themselves automatically. In other words: I got good hospital going. So I tell myself, I'll just let my rotting military out and try to save them, I mean, what's the worst that could happen?.

About 5 of my dwarves made it to the hospital being passing out - including the Axelord Nish. The rest started rotting and emitting miasma on the way to the hospital - in the middle of my main stairway. If you've ever had this happen to you, you know exactly what happened next. The rot spreads to the entire fortress. My medical team can't keep up and gets infected. I can't see anything in my hospital because the few military dwarves that get carried there (recovering the wounded made most of my civilians become infected) are emitting too much miasma. I know exactly what's going to happen to my population so I start the damage control:

1) I mass produce coffins and caskets.
2) I use the 7 miners I was grooming for my military (legendary miners/engravers/pump operators, working on wood cutting and siege operating) and decide to flood all of the levels below my hospital and build a pump stack to the surface to flood my entire fortress
3) I move my food and booze supplies to safe areas above ground just in case I can't contain the rot

As I'm doing all this, my fort is caught in the middle of a tantrum spiral and everybody's doing left and right. So to make my day worse, another FB shows up. One of my reserve Mace Dwarves had actually managed to get himself infected. Nish the Axelord was actually able to survive the rot (although every single part of his body/skin is showing up as brown or yellow). So I send all of my squads to go duke it out below my hospital against a FB with deadly blood. After a while, I see a hammerdwarf showing up to the fight: I'm confused since all of my hammer dwarves are very, very dead. So I look at who it is and realize that it's my Legendary Leatherworker.

Going back in time to talk about this guy - his name's Solon and he was my fort's Leatherworker. During an early ambush, he got himself caught by a goblin or a troll and back then I saw that his spine was shattered and he had several other major wounds to his arms and legs. I assumed he was as good as dead. A few months after that ambush I had my Hospital set and running and decided to find the dwarf with the best recuperative stat and make him sustain injuries with a danger room fitted with glass spikes. As I'm inspecting my dwarves, I come across Solon who is "Incredibly quick to heal". Off to the military you go, useless dwarf. So I station him to the danger room and wait. And wait. And wait. Then I go look at him since he's not showing up to his post and see that he's very slowly making his way to my danger room. I inspect him and see that his spine is shattered, making my realize that he was the Leatherworker I had written off as being dead a few months ago.

So back to the fight with the FB under my hospital: Solon shows up after my Axelord and Macelord have been going at it for a while. I laugh for a good minute, the FB dies and things go back to "normal".

A year later - I'm trying to figure out how actually make water wheels work, I have 37 out of 170 dwarves still alive, my Queen has been extremely helpful by feeding, watering and cleaning patients for the past year, a goblin siege was stopped dead in its tracks by a very angry Nish (and a few dozen cage traps). The bottom half of my fort has had its corridors cleaned up by a slow and steady trickle of water. Four of my 7 miners are still alive - one of which is constantly throwing tantrums. I'm running out of booze and my brewer and planter died. I have food to feed a thousand dwarves for the next century. And my crippled Leatherwork is now decked out in blue metal and once things have finally stabilized, he'll start training against goblins. I'll make him my new Militia Commander. Because god damn, he crawled through an entire fortress filled with miasma, rotting limbs and animals, pus and blood to fight a forgotten beast along side two legendary warriors.

A true dwarf.

[MoonLightBird]

Started a new fort after roughly a year without playing. I started in a flat, snow covered area. Nothing around that can kill my dwarfs. Just a few geese and a pack of capybaras. I had the 2 miners start digging out the stockpiles when I got the message that a capybara has killed a dog. I go to the surface level to find a freaking war zone! The capybaras have launched a full-fledge assault on my caravan! The first dog got his necked ripped open and bled to death. The second dog got dog-piled by 6 capybaras at once and had her head bit off. My 3rd dog had 2 legs ripped off and bled to death. Thats when my miners finished digging. They got to the surface and started slaying the hell out of the ugly bastards! In the end 7 capybaras were kill along with my 3 dogs. Some dwarfs had minor cuts and bruises, but I had only one dog left. A few months later she gave birth to 4 puppys. Also a elf caravan came by with a pair of wolfs, one male and one female. Because I was so happy to have wolfs I just stole what I wanted and let the elves leave with their lives. I'm such a nice guy. Good start to the fort I say!

[HoffaSaurusX]

Same fortress as from this thread

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=86076.0

Craftslance, the great Forgotten Beast slaying fortress grows weary of the minor challenges that come from the caverns and makes plans to breach the adamantine spire which seems to have some kind of hollow tunnel at the centre. Plans for the excavation were paused when the military commander suggested a rugged defence put in place incase what we found was not friendly. A year's digging and channelling had forged three large cave in traps surrounded by cages. The marksdwarves have set up camp around the area and plan to pepper the area with bolts incase of excursion from the depths. As a final line of defense, three squads of melee fighters, the existing military of 20, aided by the drafting of the legendary dwarves of the fortress. I like to think it went something like this...

'Are you Mebil Smokecages? The LEGENDARY dwarf?'
'Why yes, why?'
'THEN WELCOME TO THE TURMOILS OF SIN, LEGENDARY DWARF SQUAD!'
'Whaaaa! Where are you taking me!! I'm a Legendary GEM SETTER!!!'

Better they die magnificent deaths and fill their glorious tombs, than rot and die the deaths of a lazy old humans!




This will actually be my first piercing of the depths, I've played for around 5 years, but I've been content to avoid demon excursion. I plan to make this a fortress to withstand hell itself and then conquer it.

[Eric Blank]

Well, we lost a few dwarves to an orc ambush that made it down to the end of the tunnels. Mostly they were in the fortress guard, not the militia, but we did lose an axeman from the Helmed Yawns.
Had to close the gate behind them to ensure no other ambushes made it inside, so every last one of them was killed.
Out patrolling our lawn is another ogre siege, supported by trolls. With the chance of more ambushes the trolls will get away without casualty this time, because we can't open the gates to reset the cage traps. Surprised they havent hauled off or freed the last platoon that's stuck in the cages right now.
Down to 107 dwarves total.

After the ambush the civilians cleaned up after us and buried the dead in the catacombs, which I hear are looking splendid with Zasit and Likot down there engraving this year's section.
I hear they intend to dig, smooth, engrave, and furnish a new level annually. until they reach the caverns, atleast. I'm not letting them open up the caverns to build the catacombs any lower unless I'm sure the militia is prepared for them cactus beasties, but they've got a good twenty years worth of work ahead of them.

Everyone seems fine and happy. Apparently only my men and I knew the soldiers that died, and nobody at all mentioned that idiot civilian that found them.
I certainly cant complain with all the luxuries we have. Great food and booze a plenty, great rooms for the majority of the populace, and so far I've kept the place better defended than most settlements. The head stoneworker has been churning out kingly furniture like some sort of god of stone cabinets, and now there's the possibility that we could get every last room smoothed and engraved.
Our architecture isn't one of them though. God damn maze. Have you ever tried to complete one of them 'minotaur labyrinth' games with multiple stories, curving around freely on every axis? That's what we're dealing with here.
Still, none of us plan to ever return to the mountainhomes.

[Niccolo]

My dear multilevel fortress had a sad year; our herbalist went secretive and, while his greatest skill was woodcraftsmanship - which is not normally an issue when one has so much wood they could reconstruct the "woods are moving!" scene from Macbeth singlehandedly - he desired wool or silk. Neither of which I had.

So he went berserk, beat my broker to death and was finalyl put down by two wrestlers.

As such, I realised it was time to carve out some tombs. Everyone who dies normally gets a shitty grave in a hole; all who die for the glory of the fort get a tomb that will have statues, sarcophagi and so on.

My miners have developed a fetish for dirt; if I have miles of mining designated, they will always dig the dirt first. No matter what. On the upside, I now have more plants than I know what to do with; I have two breweries operating full time and I'm still getting too many. Here's hoping the next migrant wave brings me a brewer or two rather than more cannon fodder.

A black bear wandered into my main entrance today, too. Which makes me wonder what the hell my military were doing. Sadly, one of my dwarvers were disembowelled; happily, it was only a presser.

[Eric Blank]

Log of Captain Dorf, Militia Captain.
I just witnessed a terrifying event.
One of the civies came downstairs yelling that the swamp titan Sluste Jehatob Slekjathrur had come out of the woods to the north. We all ran upstairs to watch the fire-breathing terror slaughter some ogres. A magnificent thing one could say; enormous mite-like beast with a shell over the abdomen spiraling to a point (notably similar to a heap of dog feces), covered in long, thin, turquoise feathers. It began wandering towards the ogre group nearest it, who spotted it and began charging towards it. As the lasher lord closed the beast breathed a small gout of flame, which failed. Once the lasher was in range, the beast swung a him, missing as his cave crocodile mount swerved, and the lasher swung his chain into the beasts head. The ball penetrated and the beast collapsed on the spot.
Now I simply won't go out there to fight these guys. I mean really, the beast has a big enough head to be a good target, but there is absolutely no chance for us to win in our current state against these ogres. Their greenest troops can take down ancient, powerful dragons with impunity, and what isn't even a senior officer by the way he's gloating can kill a titan as easily as he can put one foot in front of the other. They're also really good at putting one foot in front of the other, don't you know! I mean If I were that tall and top-heavy I'd probably just fall over.
I'll tell the mayor that the caravan won't be coming this year... Even the three ogre swordsmen from last season's siege group are still standing in our entry corridor.

So I did and the guy tells me I also wont get any decent steel gear any time soon because we have no marble dug out at the moment. I ask her why it didn't get dug along with the iron ore and apparently its because the miners had to stop work on that to go do the catacombs. I told her she's pretty smart to have skipped the hospital entirely and furnish the catacombs because we wouldn't be needing it since now we're pretty much doomed without the steel gear. Fool thanked me. Sounded sincere... Well, she did name the place Tombworship.

Well, ignoring her ignorance and skipping to something less depressing; everyone's been perfectly fine. Carefree as if they had some confidence in my militia group that I just can't fathom. Only whining child in the fort is some captain under my command named 'Eric' or something stupid and undwarven like that, whose been moping about for whatever reason. Not the injured foot, he's only been complaining about the patrol duty we had to pull off during the Great Wyvernocalypse - as I call it - and then about being relieved. What an ingrate. Don't know why he's in the military, or at least not why he's in charge of a melee squad. Not only was he originally a marksman, but he's absolutely pathetic. Bruises like an elven banana and swings his hammer like it were a support column. Can swing it for a good long time, though.

The farmers say they want some space for farms planted but I dont want to dismantle the walls around the irrigation door to muddy the fields in case the cave crocs every last damn ogre is riding think they can use that for an entrance by smashing up the door and flooding the whole fort. What a disaster that would be!
They can plant more outdoor crops for the moment, harvest the bees... hmm... I could go for some goose egg roasts... Maybe I'll suggest they harvest the birds...

Several months later...

The second stoneworker in the group that founded the fort ran out of the food stockpiles screaming about a ghost, having blown her booze all over the wall in terror. Many of the other dwarves witnessed the apparition as well, saying it was Olon Tadkadol, some farmer probably killed during the last siege. I thought everyone was put to rest properly. Oh well, I have to finish counting the ogres that came THIS season.

7 platoons of ogres, ignoring the mostly-caged platoon, led by a cobald general who I recognize; Gabuster Ithordkrus. Shes responsible for a lot of damage to the less violent nations in the region. The merchants always told us to kill her as soon as we got the chance.
4 groups of trolls. Fairly worthless when compared to the ogre hordes, especially being unarmed, unarmored, untrained, and smaller.
The last siege group never left, and neither did those swordsmen from the first siege. If they DON'T leave at some point, and just keep coming, we really never will be able to trade again. We don't have mithril to satisfy the mayor's demands now. She may need to be removed from office.

Turns out we're also in need of coal to produce the steel. I'm afraid I may have to open up the caverns to the woodcutters just to get our hands on fungal wood to supply it. This siege likely isn't going to pack up and go home on it's own.

[Roctiv]

My current fort goes only two z-levels deep due to an aquifer I failed to breach (mainly due to my lazyness), so everything is made of wood and its main source of income is masterful dyed clothes with dyed cloth images sewed on them (and sometimes masterfully encrusted with bones). Designer clothes, anyone ?

But my main problem with this fort doesn't come from the aquifer, nor the fact that my dwarves randomly claim '☼☼pig tail fiber sock☼☼'s worth 1500☼ and let them in the main hallway.

My problem is that only three things are sewed in cloth to almost everything in my fort :
 - An artifact silver breasplate from a previous fort.
 - The same dwarf killed by a masterful silver arrow shot from a copper bow during a goblin siege, with force details.
 - My broker, surrounded by toads.

Apart from that, I have two legendary weavers, one legendary dyer, two legendary clothiers and one legendary cook. No legendary miner or mason though.



PS : I just re-read my post. My fortress is full of elves.

[shadenight123]

drown them all. breach the acquifer. then come back as an adventure. swim further down, and grab what you want.
or you could use dfhack to magma it to hell...the acquifer i mean. (using also dfreveal).
but, i repeat, a surface fort made of wood, with a breached acquifer to make it a tower which stands in the middle of an ocean, with wooden bridges...is priceless.

[Lost_Deep]

Remember those goblins and badgers that got along so well?

I opened the door to let them in and kill me.

Five minutes later, I noticed a distinct lack of "Urist Mceveryone was struckdown/bled to death" and that the goblins were gone. Looking at the death list, I noticed that they were not dead.

Stupid goblins! So incompetent they can't even kill a fortress right! The badgers are still attacking, but the goblins just left when they got bored. Man up, you stupid goblins! If you're going to start something, finish it!

New plan: build lots of traps. Yeah, make them wish they had finished me while they still could!

[Areyar]

Started a new fort recently.
temperate saltwater swamp. Dorfs are at war with everyone, didnt realise this till later though.

We intended to dig a big hole in the ground and live off trading the products of our minecraft, hence we took six picka an axe and our awesome leader can trade like a ... a ... er... hum whatever.
all was well untill the traders areived from home, THEY DID NOT BRING ANY BOOZE! and we were about at the stage of drinking blood. 
Some high priority building and learning created some much needed liquor just in time to prevent extinction.
Word must have reached the mountainhomes that we were making ale, because next spring our population tripled.
At this point we also finished our windmill waterpurifier- hopefully the reservoir will not freeze over in winter, our doctor claims he needs freshwater to clean wounds.
Then A massive ambush of elves reminded us we were at war. We had in total two macedwarves in the military.
Tactics were required. So everyone was drafted and told to guard the bottom of the pit. Some were unlucky to be jumped by the cowardly elves before they could reach the safety of the pit unfortunately. But the tactic proved successfull overall, losses were about equal and this  while only two mnaces one axe and six picks were available to all the dwarves. We were reduced to using the wooden implements of our foes. Something that will never happen again! I've ordered weapons of steel to be forged in large quantities. The inferior quality stuff we will sell off. Hopefully for booze.
Also we dug some shallow cellars for farms. neccessity.
I must see about creating a guard force, we had some tantrumming. Some silly creature had lost her mate and decided it was needed to kill a mule.
I think we will cancel the hammers and change that for picks. We are a still mining outpost. Everyone, save the woodcutters and marksdwarves will be required to carry a pick and train with it once every week in the barracks. We will see about smithing some helmets and chainmail. Any armour taken will be mandatory to be worn at all times.

That is all.
Praise the miners.

[Sinistar]

Another day, another fortress. Last one painfully reminded me how dully ineffective stone-fall traps became in newer version when it comes to goblins. So I decided to try weapon traps, seeing how I again struggle with millitary. Packed me an anvil among other things, but later realized I forgot to assign broker skills. Oh well.
What is interesting thou is I got a cave-in report the moment I started playing. I heard of people getting this, even multiple at once, but I got only one. My first cave-in-on-embark, yay!
But it gets better. I was anxious to discover what actually happened and discovered I have, merely 39 levels bellow.

It starts with "oh hey, there is something...red, few levels below?"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Indeed, level 45 looks like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This be an INCREDIBLE fun, no kidding.

[BodyGripper]

My problem is that only three things are sewed in cloth to almost everything in my fort :
 - An artifact silver breasplate from a previous fort.
PS : I just re-read my post. My fortress is full of elves.

I'm imagining a bunch of tuxedo shirts, only with breastplates instead of tuxedos.

[Zaroua]

My fort is in its final hour. After 15 years, it's about to be over. Nish killed 4 FBs in a single year, all in single combat. The last one was another one that cause rot. I tried to save Nish - my medical team got the rot off and sutured his left knee but the few dwarves that I had left had to go to the infected water source to clean/water him up and all got infected, too. Now Nish is sitting on a table about to die of hunger or dehydration along with the 13 other civilians. Solon is going on a final journey: he's crawling his way down towards the bottom of a curious underground structure. I doubt he'll make it without some serious micromanagement - I'd probably need to have Solon haul a bed, food and booze near the top of the structure and move the booze/food/bed down slowly after each time he rests.

In any case, my fortress hasn't attracted any migrants in the past 3 years and after all my injured dwarves die, all I'll have left is a cripple decked out in blue metal and 2 kids. This has been my best fortress yet.

Things I've learned:

1) Hospitals are build with grates floor supported by carved fortifications with refillable water reservoirs above to cleanse away the rot.
2) Each set of Traction Bench, Bed and Table is built in its own room with a door and a lever situated in another area of the fort - if there's miasma emitting tissue/blood in a room, whoever's in there gets locked in, flooded until cleaned and then let out.
3) Any Forgotten Beast/Titan with poison, deadly blood/spittle or dust has to be handled with extreme care - preferably with concentrated ballista fire. If the military has to step in and the FB isn't made out of some ridiculous material - only a few of them will engage at a time and hopefully kill it.
4) It's almost impossible to piss off the Elves by seizing their goods or offering them wood, probably better to just trade with them