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[CognitiveDissonance]

>.>

Bang Bang, Urist McSwell's ☼Silver Hammer☼ Came Down Upon Thestkig's Head
Bang Bang, Urist McSwell's ☼Silver Hammer☼ Made Sure That It Was Dead!

[KroganElite]

Strange mood dwarf just created my first ever useful weapon artifact.  It even has an image of the founding of my fortress. Note the weapon's weight. *drool*

[PDF urist master]

currently being sieged by goblins. most of the goblins are walled off, except the entrance through the river, from which goblin bowmen mounted on amphibious mounts poured through. i have the military to deal with them (as well as three GCS of questionable value against bowmen) i think i can hold through. my only true concern is getting the animals (whom are pastured on the surface to safety, but i'll probably leave a few for cannon fodder.

[Fishybang]

I just had my first twins in a fort ever, not really that big of a deal but it is for me.

[Jenniretta]

putting up gold statues all over nourishedcobalt, and decided to check a few of them, see what they were of... turns out, the statue that is just out the stairs leading to the noble section that houses the mayor, hammerer, baron, champion, and captain of the guard... is of a hamster,
There is a 1159(Weight Unit) Hamster to represent the Dwarf nobility.

I find this endlessly amusing, and hope I can get more golden hamsters to decorate this wing of the noble's floor.

[Catsup]

so apparently i've learned now that the number of undead siegers sent by necromancers varies with wealth. Its year 2 late autumn now in my second successful evil embark. CherishedShades is doing well, 2 of the 3 cavern levels are breached and under control with the entrances cage trapped and seal-able and exploration shafts walled off; the third cavern layer's door is under construction.

Thanks to a magma pipe that extended all the way up to the first cavern layer, i now dont need to build my minecart system all the way down to the magma sea, and so i've started actively colonizing the first cavern layer so i can get my magma forges up and running. Hundreds of rock blocks were built to seal off the magma pipe, and to surround it with roof and wall, it was alot of work, the pipe must have been at least 30x30 and its almost sealed off, but not completely yet.

However since construction is not complete there are many holes in cavern level1's defense, and i cannot lock it down completely without sealing off all cavern access. To make things worse, a flying forgotten beast attacked me during the summer of this year. I was completely caught off guard since it was only second year, i didnt even have 80 population yet (could not see wealth since i dont have an appraiser) but i was pretty sure im under 100k wealth since i didnt even make weapons/armor yet, or any gold items. i've only made a few glass terraniums for cage traps using my single magma glass furnace and some masterwork green glass spikes for my slaughter chamber and for trade. Luckily the forgotten beast was only a blob made of ash, with no special attack, and so died easily to the few marksdwarf migrants i got.


now to the present, the siege at the late autumn of second year was one of the funnest, and its still on-going in fact. After the dwarven caravan arrived and began setting up shop, a siege of about 50 undead showed up and started coming towards the fortress. I quickly tried to get my dwarves to pull a lever and seal the depot, but they were too busy smoothing walls (i have the wall smoothing labor on almost everyone). And although the undead were slow, the trade depot was actually the shortest route into my fort, and so a couple of kobold thieves tried to sneak in through the depot entrance. This resulted in some fun as the caravan guards started chasing the kobolds, and chased them right out the depot entrance and soon into the hordes of undead.

One of the kobolds actually managed to get away (their dam fast) and the caravan guards fought valiantly, managing to kill about a quarter of the undead, but suffered casualties. Then more fun arrived, 2 goblin ambushes ended up attacking the undead siege from the other side of the map, and by the time they were finished, most of the undead were dead. They also finished off the caravan guards that were still outside. Somehow 2 caravan guards managed to retreat all the way back to the depot, and it just so happens there were baby snatches about too. Some of the snatchers used the normal fort entrance and were caged, but another one was caught by the merchants and killed. However, the snatcher caused some of the merchants to make a run for it, and it was at this unfortunate time that my dwarves finally decided to pull the retracting bridge lever that sealed off the depot.

2 merchants and a caravan guard were locked outside and had to use the normal entrance to get back inside, however, the goblins were trying to use that entrance as well, and were fighting against undead trying to get through. All over the map, the undead were coming back to life due to the evil land, and eventually the second squad of goblins retreated after some casualties and after the first squad was all dead/caged. The merchants and the guard that was locked out ended up dieing and the merchants inside now refused to trade with me. Tearing down the depot and forbidding the main entrance's hatch since all cage traps in the entrance were now exhausted, i watched as even the dead corpses in the neutral part of my map, near the center, started coming back to life.

Only 2 of the necromancers were caged, and im pretty sure there were at least 2 more hidden, and with the entrance locked, they now wander around the map, reviving corpses that didnt revive on their own. The last actions i took before saving were to order my dwarves to collect more sand for cages, and setting out the dig blue-print for an improved version of my cage-maze trap.

[proxn_punkd]

I was completely caught off guard since it was only second year, i didnt even have 80 population yet (could not see wealth since i dont have an appraiser) but i was pretty sure im under 100k wealth since i didnt even make weapons/armor yet, or any gold items. i've only made a few glass terraniums for cage traps using my single magma glass furnace and some masterwork green glass spikes for my slaughter chamber and for trade. Luckily the forgotten beast was only a blob made of ash, with no special attack, and so died easily to the few marksdwarf migrants i got.


... I quickly tried to get my dwarves to pull a lever and seal the depot, but they were too busy smoothing walls (i have the wall smoothing labor on almost everyone)...

I hate to break it to you, but glass and smooth walls are real wealth-boosters for your fortress, ESPECIALLY high-quality work. Why do you think they're such a mood boost for your dwarves to see?

Better put a little more thought into defenses before you start engraving those walls. Green glass makes excellent weapon traps, incidentally.

[Catsup]

I hate to break it to you, but glass and smooth walls are real wealth-boosters for your fortress, ESPECIALLY high-quality work. Why do you think they're such a mood boost for your dwarves to see?

Better put a little more thought into defenses before you start engraving those walls. Green glass makes excellent weapon traps, incidentally.

well dam, i could not set up a cage maze in advance cuz i barely had any wood, i only have cavern 1 and 2 entrances secured, and those didnt have enough time to grow many trees so i used my wood for mainly wheel barrows and beds. The surface was too dangerous to get wood from because of the mist that turns anything caught in it to husks, and from the undead animals/evil resurrection.

the caverns were also occasionally dangerous themselves thanks to some creatures (troglodyte, green devourer) that were modded to be hostile to anything except their own race. Battles between crundles and the green devourer, and troglodyte and cave crocodiles ensued, and thanks to the evil biome, cavern level 2 had a sizeable undead horde inside it by the time i breached it...

anyway it all resulted in having not enough wood for wooden cages and so i had to delay building of defensives until i could get a glass industry up and running.

[Oaktree]

New fort begun.  Named "Carnagegalley". 

Intent was another embark along a major river with the fortress tasked with building a bridge and extending the paved trade road.  (This is the same dwarf civ as Lashedbridge - the previous fortress.)

Well, the entire southern 1/3 of the embark is solid water - so far bank of the river to work with.   And the massive drainage drops the depth to 1 along the west side.  Which is odd, and also is accumulating a large number of fish corpses as the fish air drown there in the shallows.

The plus side is that the high bank (a 2-3 level cliff) gives good initial security on that side to the fortress.  The other three sides have been ditched or de-ramped to establish a large semi-secure perimeter for pastures, wood stockpiles and initial workshops.

The initial two soil layers are being used for storage, dorm, Trade Depot and everything else.  That's because the dwarves are busy penetrating the aquifer that lies directly below.  Turned out to be two levels deep and took about seven months to get a 2x2 stairway into dry rock layers.

At this point the miners are working downwards.  No caverns found yet.  No metal ore found yet.  But at least there is a flux supply since two levels of marble have been found. 

Two migrant waves have brought the adult population up to sixteen.  Two highly trained veteran military from Lashedbridge came in the second wave - which will be very helpful once I get them weapons and armor.  One migrant also brought a pet GCS, so a silk farm can be worked into the design and help with export goods.

And the autumn caravan brought enough supplies that the fort should make it through the winter.

[Jenniretta]

Yet to create more golden hamsters.
Also STILL undersiege from the necromancers. It's lasted 8 months so far, with no progress on either side. considering opening the doors and greeting the shambling horde with my newly constructed catapaults.
Luckily, through salvage and trade, we have a fair bit of better metal, so my military isn't overly dependent on copper anymore, we have steel, bronze, and Iron to spare. Along with the near endless supply of silver maces and hammers, and copper bolts, things are shaping up okay.

We got a forgotten beast at the season change, a giant slug with wings and poisonous blood. it made a beeline up the pit, but never made it to the top, it was intercepted half way and a few bolts and a swing of an axe later and it was back on the cavern floor. it killed two (maybe three) but the dangerous blood seems to have done nothing. Maybe it's just because I have so much excess clothing of all sorts that there was no skin exposed to it, but it's been a month with no dwarf who was exposed to the blood showing any signs of trouble.

We recently struck warm walls, as well. no work has been completed to harness the magma, before work can begin so deep I'm going to need to set up some space, and probably minecarts, so that I don't lose months of work to ridiculous haul lengths and heavy gold- and silver-works.

I may just move a significant chunk of the fortress deeper, though - namely, make food, bed, drink, and metal industries in the depths, so the magma forges can be tended without needing too much dedicated hauling to make the fruits of their labour accessible to the fortress proper.
Fuel is in no short supply - I still have over 300 bars of coke, and the subterranean "trees" are ever present to be converted into charcoal.

Have yet to stumble across any spoilerite, but it's here somewhere. I can smell it. [Also, the map size I used means there HAS to be at least one spire]

[fractalman]

In the undead reasearch fort...
I got my biggest goblin seige yet.  Do you know how ridiculous goblins look sitting on top of giant toads?
Well, ok, they killed 3 or 4 military dwarves, but on the whole, it turned into an expiriment with butchering...
and then i discovered the "search" option in the job manager, set up the creation of soap...yeah.  first time i've ever made soap.  ever!
...
more background: I recently had the first ever "died of infection" dwarf.  My med dwarves have been relying on stagnant water from murky pools, without soap, have treated at least 20 dwarves for various injuries, and yet...

Anyways, I discovered that i not only need tallow, i need lye.  I need ash to make lye.  There is precious little wood on the map, and the elves point at a single speck of sawdust on the goblinite and leave in a huff.  So i have to wonder: finish spamming the boundary with cages, or make enough soap to...Urist! that's the last of the soap we managed to produce! it was supposed to be for treating wounds!...

The necrobaconer 1.0, the first advance on undead reasearch in 6 years (in a fort of 7-8 years)  was a disaster, and not a spectacular one either.  Two or three dwarves died from it during the initial testing run-they were, of coure, miners, one of which was legendary. again; no tantrummers.


...oh! I forgot to mention! It seems that having really, really nice meeting rooms assigned to your nobles goes a long way towards stopping tantrums, as long as it's only a few dwarves who are unhappy. 
...did I mention, the king is in the quarry making rock pots (usefull), and satisfying his own "make scepter" and "make backpack" mandates? heh heh. 


But alas, the grand kitchen-er, undead reasearch fort-is facing too much temporal distortion, and a wood shortage as a result of my desire to make soap and picky elves.

tl:dr: I discovered many wonderful features too late to help the fps of my fort. 

[Buttery_Mess]

One of my citizens got outed as a vampire. I decided to dispose of her by giving her a dagger and a shield and to kindly stand on this colossal leaden trapdoor... I dumped her unceremoniously into the level three caverns, and had her fight the resident Forgotten Beast there.

To my surprise, she not only won, but utterly trounced it; not bad, since she had never held a dagger or a shield before. She only sustained a broken nose. She now maintains an eternal, silent vigil over the level 3 caverns.

[de5me7]

Forgotten beasts can be wildly different in strength, as can Titans. Some are nigh undefeatable terrors, others can be taken on by a drunken elf with a stick. I've built lots of bridges around in the air in my caverns so if one does show up it will have no problem getting into the outer halls of my fortress.

My dwarves have elected two vampires to the postion of Major on the trot.
Also lots of the carvings around my forts are of these vampires striking down other dwarves and laughing.

I think they are trying to tell me something...

I don't have the trapdoor to the lava sea built yet so they are both still at large.

[mobucks]

My last Vampire survived 50 hammer strikes... and never moved again. Till I built an upright spear trap and a lever under him, he would move for that. I chased him around the fort building upright spears till finally he gave up and got perforated stayed still. RIP.

[tahujdt]

My last Vampire survived 50 hammer strikes... and never moved again. Till I built an upright spear trap and a lever under him, he would move for that. I chased him around the fort building upright spears till finally he gave up and got perforated stayed still. RIP.

That is a hilarious mental image.