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[skyte100]

I just noticed that my fort is now being fed by forgotten beast meat and its fat was turned into soap.

[Larix]

The Mechanical Clock of Wheels have finished the bulk of the work for their current project at Drownedgears: the Dwarven Clock Mk.II is working, including a (rather wonky) hour display and a total projected lifetime of 10 000 years (9843, to be precise, because it's already the year 157). The carts for the decades, centuries and millennia haven't been assigned yet, because the clock would as yet not be able to display those units.

The core oscillators have been started a full season ago and operate on a 360-step basis, so if there's any imprecision, it should have shown by now.
So far, we've used ~260 hatch covers and 810 mechanisms; i think the finished work will be around 900 mechanisms. Since the heavy lifting has been done, we finally accepted the offer of a barony, which was granted to our brave expedition leader and chief mechanic.

There have been three deaths of dwarfs so far - one a child standing on a hatch cover while someone else opened it from below, one a farmer who passed too close to a louse man (brain-punched) and one dropped ~30 levels by a buggy cave-in on the top of the map. Several minecart-related injuries(x), but the only lives claimed by them were two cats used in a cat trigger to properly start the converter unit (i use 720-step repeaters, so to convert their pulses into days, i use three and feed their signals into a five-step counter array; obviously, for the 'day' signal to be anywhere near the actual change of day, i couldn't rely on dwarven willingness to push a cart - it was hard enough getting them to actually push the cart for the full-day counter during the weekday i wanted it started).

(x) and at least three of them were caused by telekinetic minecarts.

[Diablous]

Winter is coming to a close, and with it the fourth year of Wounddrinks. A few things so far.

Wounddrinks has been promoted from a barony to a county. Once the dwarven caravan returns it will surely become a duchy.

The military of Wounddrinks has been growing. Between the newly formed fortress guard and drafting of migrants, Wounddrinks now has 24 dwarves, divided into four squads of six, ready to rise to defend it. Three melee squads, including the fortress guard, and one squad of archers.

I've been designating large swathes of the surrounding hills to be channeled. The goal is to flatten the hills freeing up stone and space for a keep to replace the walled hole in the ground I have now. This has been causing cave-ins somehow though. Which is odd as only one z-level at a time is being channeled. The rules for cave-ins might have changed since I played last, which was the days of 40d. I'll have to read up on that.

I've breached the second cavern. Nothing has come out of it to threaten my dwarves yet. I've had it thoroughly explored, with bridges set up to make sure my dwarves can get everywhere that isn't underwater.

I have a vampire skulking around my fort. A planter was found sucked dry of blood in his room. Lovely. I'll have to figure out how to deal with this.

A squadron of goblin ambushers was discovered. I don't have any real details yet. When I saw the announcement I just saved and closed the game. I'm getting tired so I'll exact vengeance on the goblin menace tomorrow. Well, vengeance besides the vengeance I already exact when I strip goblin prisoners of their weapons and armor, then release them from their cages in the barracks while the militia trains.

[Bludulukus]

Fortressbowel, pop 255, year 18

Bonun the eight legged amber quadruped() that shoots deadly dust has come!
The military was sent to deal with it and they did it with ruthless efficiency, the creature was finished by 16 year old Asen Breachedhames the Flighty Rampage of Volcanos with a punch to the head that detached it from the body and sent it flying.

I assumed the operation a grand success, with no visible injuries reported when on the trip back up to the fortress some dwarves started retching and vomiting and also some mysterious bleeding. On close inspection they expressed feeling very drowsy and they were sent to the medical ward for diagnosis.

The doctors came up with nothing and the patients were released but they still vomit and bleed all the time and I am terribly worried. It seems Bonun is trying to reach beyond the grave for squishy dwarves.

And that is why I don't send melee dwarfs to fight beasts with deadly blood or dust any more... once had a bunch of champions experience spontaneous explosive hemorrhaging a few days after a fight. Blood Everywhere. You lucked up this time, vomit syndromes last a month or so before they clear up.

Well, 2 months after the battle Olon Theaterworked finally bled to death. I must assume the other afflicted will suffer the same drawn out death, which is a terrible blow as most of them are axe lords and mace lords and relatively young aswell.

[Oaktree]

Year 6 draws to a close in Relicblaze.  The hearths are warms below ground and the snow keeps piling up on the surface!

Two goblin sieges during the year.  Both mercilessly crushed with fairly high goblin casualties and minimal dwarven ones.  Between the two six squads of goblin cavalry were practically wiped out and a seventh simply driven off by crossbow fire.  Five ogre units were wiped out -- and I am impressed with their ability to press forward attacks when horribly maimed.  And the goblins are also short one general.

The militia marksdwarf units got very good training from these fights and have been promoted to guard units.  One unit is still in training, but will be promoted soon.  Which will give the fortress a couple of dozen marksdwarves with some metal armor, metal bolts, and some melee military training (hammer, sword, or both). 

The backup melee units are developing more slowly, but also are at least past the recruit stage and should improve quickly with more sparring work.  They are already being put to work with minor pests issues like a eagle flying around in the outer tunnels.  The main elite melee squad and a small axe squad have been handling most fights and doing quite well - most of them have at least fifteen notable kills and the squad leader has around thirty.

Otherwise work proceeds with side projects and lumbering runs into the caverns.  A GCS has been spotted in the upper cavern.  Question now is whether to avoid it, trap it, or simply hunt and kill it.

[dewboy]

Shadowhalls has our first artifact, a copper battleaxe. Is this better than a steel one? Besides that, we have begun the construction obsidian walls around our fortress.

[Flarp]

Inkwealth just survived its second siege defense failure; most of the military is dead, but so are all the goblins. Migration to cavern-level dormitories is underway.

[Larix]

The powerless, waterless precision clock is finished.
The heart is the oscillator array:

connected on the level below like this:


The Trinity Clock only uses the signals of the northern pressure plates of the three circuits on the left of the screen. The fourth array is just for laughs, so i can boast about a 'quad-core' machine.

Each circuit makes a full round in 720 steps and the three Clock oscillators were started 240 steps apart, so there's a signal every 240 steps, reliably and constantly. These signals are counted and thus converted into a day cycle by this clusterfuck:

I had accidentally built it directly underneath an older counter array, so carefully avoided possible locations of 'falling' minecarts. Unfortunately, this totally messed up the accuracy of the converter - there's an annoyingly large bandwidth of latencies between incoming and outgoing signals, in one case possible a full dwarf hour. Sort of negates the effort i spent calibrating the loops for generating hourly signals. And of course i only found out about it after starting the machinery, by which time building a better converter would've also required stopping the main oscillators to connect them there, which is kinda difficult when working with perpetual motion and with no off switches installed. At least it misses no signals and translates the precise base ticks into precise days.

And of course, it has a clock face:

With a simple season - month - week - day calendar underneath. So it's the 13th of felsite, 11 o'clock(ish) Drownedgears local time (the mountainhome calendar switches days at 19h, the local calendar at 22h).

Of course, we're also keeping track of the year, and the clock will only wrap around in the year 10 000. To count that high, we of course need lots of track circuits with lots of ramps underneath. _Lots_ of ramps:


Of course, no-one knows if the clock actually _will_ wrap around, because at the 10 000 year mark, a pressure plate will be activated which collapses a support constructed on the very top of the map. The adults of course remember the construction of it (and the spontaneous cave-in that happened when it was finished), but they've started telling the children that the pillar holds up the sky and the sky will come crashing down should it ever crumble.

[Diablous]

Okay, year four of Wounddrinks has ended, and I just dealt with the goblin ambushers.

Two squadrons appeared, one that was entirely swordgoblins, the other a mix of melee weapons. They appeared and attacked a pet duck, giving the civilians outside time to flee to the fortress. I deployed the military and sent them after the goblins. When the two forces met they clashed in a flurry of swinging weapons and bloody body parts. During this I noticed my marksdwarves did not fire at the goblins but instead tried to beat them with their crossbows. Crap, they used up all their ammo at the archery ranges.

Anyway, the battle was not going in my favor. The dwarves were taking more injuries and losses than the goblins. Some of the dwarves even fled after taking some nasty injuries. A few dwarves perservered, mainly a captain named Kogan. She has been with the Wounddrinks militia since the day it started, and it shows. She managed, with the help of a few others, to do enough damage to cause the goblins to flee. A handful of goblins escaped at the edge of the map. But this wasn't the end.

A fleeing marksdwarf found a third goblin squad, all macegoblins lead by a goblin with a crossbow. The marksdwarf didn't survive. The third squad attacked my captain of the guard and militia commander, killing them both, before they decided to flee like their friends.

All in all, the military repelled the goblins but at significant cost. Thirteen dwarves total died, just over half the military. The fortress guard, the Flags of Rope, was utterly destroyed. The Lashes of Diamond lost their commander, the Pulleys of Strength lost two soldiers, and the marksdwarf squad, the Tombs of Dripping, lost four soldiers. Many casualties, but it is a victory. Time to see if Wounddrinks can survive year five.

[Maul_Junior]

Dear human merchants from The Confederacy of the Dying:

We did not mean to seize your animals. Indeed, we had intended to pay you, as all good dwarves are wont to do. We had brought goods intended to trade, we had selected our entire trading stockpile and was prepared to exchange it for the animals we had selected, and that anvil. It was merely a slip of the fingers that ended up with us seizing the animals, instead of trading with you. You were pleased with our previous trades, and we really wanted to get off on the right foot, especially considering that this was your first time trading with us.

sincerely,
The dwarves of Teshkadfath, a Fortress of The Book of Carnality


the names DF comes up with are awesome.

I'm from The Book of Carnality,
the humans are Confederacy of Dying
Goblins are Hate of Pine
Elves are Raven of Wiping......

now if only my fingers hadn't slipped at exactly the wrong moment....

Though my biggest regret is that I apparently sold all my Cave Wheat/Cave Wheat seeds to the first caravan, when I was desperate for cash and sold everything I could.

[Diablous]

Something interesting just crawled out of the caverns.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I saw this guy. He's made of fire, and I have little experience with non solid forgotten beasts. He didn't budge an inch when he arrived. He just stood there as the surrounding cavern burned. Luckily the fires didn't spread very far and it was soon safe for the military to arrive. He turned out to be pathetically easy, just standing as my marksdwarves destroyed him. A single bolt was enough to destroy most of a body part or sever a limb. He died when a second bolt hit the lower body, severing it. The only casualty was a melee dwarf who got a bit too close and got a face full of flame for his trouble.

[Bludulukus]

Year 570 has been hard on Fortressbowel, the last of the dwarves afflicted by the Permanent Bleeding Syndrome of the beast Bonun has succumbed to the insidious disease.

Vutok Lorbamnekmol Kilrudkatthir Bomrek- Axelord
Rigoth Uzolvabok- Axeman
Olon Stinthhaduccim- Recruit
Lorbam Geshudrul- Macelord
Fath Gusilkacoth Bibarakam Morul- Spearmaster
Lorbam Fathsefol Odad Zatam- Macelord
Bomrek Dodoketes Umgansedish- Swordmaster/Captain of the Guard

Rest in pieces brave souljas.

I am seriously considering tearing apart the elven caravan as tribute to the fallen.

[Lolfail0009]

Year 570 has been hard on Fortressbowel, the last of the dwarves afflicted by the Permanent Bleeding Syndrome of the beast Bonun has succumbed to the insidious disease.

Vutok Lorbamnekmol Kilrudkatthir Bomrek- Axelord
Rigoth Uzolvabok- Axeman
Olon Stinthhaduccim- Recruit
Lorbam Geshudrul- Macelord
Fath Gusilkacoth Bibarakam Morul- Spearmaster
Lorbam Fathsefol Odad Zatam- Macelord
Bomrek Dodoketes Umgansedish- Swordmaster/Captain of the Guard

Rest in pieces brave souljas.

I am seriously considering tearing apart the elven caravan as tribute to the fallen.

As is proper.
Burn 'em for mourning!
Burn 'em for celebration!

[Oaktree]

Year 7 comes to a close in Relicblaze.

Weather Report:
Today: Snow
Tomorrow: Clearing, then snow.

One goblin siege during the year.  Repelled with heavy goblin losses.  The axe squad, led by the fortress militia commander, got some heavy action and the MC has now gained an extra name.  Four fully active marksdwarf squads allow for more of the archery bunkers to be used at once and that proved useful for tearing up goblins attempting to flee the tunnels, or being too wary to enter in the first place.

Also got some data as a squad crossed in front of the "water gun".  Firing rate and accuracy is still too low, but three hits were observed on goblin cavalry.

Hit 1:  Mount (giant rat) pushed 13 tiles by impact.   Leg broken by skid.  Goblin rider pushed 7 tiles.  Leg shattered by impact.  Hit 13 tiles down range.
Hit 2:  Mount (giant olm) pushed 15 tiles by impact.  Bruises only.  Goblin rider pushed 7 tiles.  Ribs broken (through breastplate) by impact; hand and foot broken by skid. Point blank hit.
Hit 3:  Previously wounded goblin hit again.  Pushed 7 tiles and received further broken bone.

No hit produced any sort of "ice wall" on a target.  The impact pushing implies that a potential additional weaponization is to use the water balls to force the targets into a pit (which with a non-freezing biome would also serve to collect water from misses).

Current modification is seeing if a 2nd cart can be added to the loop to increase the firing rate.

[skyte100]

I just put the ghost of a baby to rest. Apparently when his mother took him into combat with her he was killed so completely that there was nothing left but a fine paste that was absorbed with his leather baby onesie.