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[fortydayweekend]

First zombie siege almost took out the fort. I sealed everything up and planned to let a few zombies in at a time, where they could be killed out of sight of the necromancers and dumped in the magma garbage. Which would be slow work but should have been relatively safe with 20 trained iron-clad soldiers.

But 5 Necromancers managed to sneak in with the returning hunters, so the 5 zombies turned into dozens of zombie arms and legs and heads. As well as the recently-killed minotaur and of course a bunch of mussels. Half the fort was trapped outside with no food and only stagnant water to drink. The hunters even took the opportunity for a nap in the middle of the chaos. A few zombies made it down the stairs where they were held off by the pack of dogs that I had randomly put there to keep them out of the way.

The battle went on for half a season until the necromancers were all caught and killed. Zombies aren't really dangerous to trained dwarves and I only lost one swordsdwarf. His wife discovered one of the necromancers and killed him with a single punch. She tantrumed and attacked a mason, then went to babble incoherently in the dining room. 4 other dwarves are unhappy but seem stable.

With all the necros dead the corpses outside the walls were easy to kill, though the clean up may take a while.

The military all got great experience and as the goblin corpse that scored a kill became notable, half the military dwarves ended up with a title after killing him repeatedly.

The 12-bed hospital which seemed like overkill now seems to have been a really good idea. Time to expand the mausoleum to give all the dwarf corpses a proper burial...

[KingBacon]

I got tired of all the violence and chaos, so I'm building a winery on an island with elfs and humans. Things sort of feel like playing harvest moon right now. Building fenced areas for my sheep and goats. Setting up some small buildings. Making fire clay pots. I don't want to say this is gonna be a "human fort" since there is plenty of rock salt, flux, coal, and iron to turn this place into a real fortress.

[WoobMonkey]

After years of relative peace (a few 'sieges,' consisting of <20 actual foes, each), I finally finished the pump-stack which will feed my aqueduct, which will provide soothing showers for the citizens of WoodWalls. 

Of course that has to be the time that the vile force brings a squadron of Trolls.

Time to rebuild, after years of labour.  Nothing is ever easy.

[Roach]

Time to rebuild, after years of labour.

Why not reclaim? Or is that just not dwarven enough?

[WoobMonkey]

Time to rebuild, after years of labour.

Why not reclaim? Or is that just not dwarven enough?

Because the fort itself is fine.  Thing is, my aqueduct setup was/is to be fed from a pumpstack, which is fed from a stream, which is a goodly distace from my front door.  While my squaddies were busy killing off the Goblins, the Trolls were busy killing off my constructions.

[pisskop]

This latest fort has been under seemingly constant assault from nature.  gremlins, kea men, keas, kiwi men, trogs, spiders, swallows, and one very upset panda have all tried to eat my fort.  Also pressurized water sent a miner over ten meters back, fracturing him so much I now have a trained and dedicated doctor.  Even the moths are attacking us!

My solution has been liberal cage traps, however I in the spirit of fun Ive started animal tortures.  In addition to chaining to test the premise for a 'skewering zoo' Ive made a pit to feed creatures to an ornery giant dingo.  Ive been toying with trying to make the traps maim but not kill creature of specific sizes.  I think its going . . . okay thus far.

Spoiler: Krippled Kiwi (click to show/hide)

At least Ive confirmed that wild creatures will attack another if they find it chained.  Actually, Thats what happened to that specific trog.  A kea was working him over for a while.

[Melting Sky]

Overseer's Journal: The Goblin Siege of Autumn 1058

The choking stench of burning corpses and miasma fills the fortress. The test of the new dragon defense system has gone terribly wrong. Our most skilled and trusted engineers assured us the design was sound and that the new war dragon would be more than capable of taking out the entire enemy siege if the goblin army foolishly chose to assault the new secondary entrance. They could not have been more wrong.

The agonized screams of the first wave of goblins filled the air as they melted in a wave of searing dragon fire along with the complex system of draw bridges which had been installed as blast shutters around the fiery behemoth. Now with our control system melted there was no way to stop the dragons destruction. Fire, screaming goblins and smoke filled the western entrance for what seemed like days. At some point in the chaos we lost the drawbridge that served as our last resort for sealing the fortress should the new defense system fail. As we began to catch glimpses through the billowing smoke it became apparent that things were much worse than we had initially assessed.

Apparently some of the most elite and or lucky of the invaders had learned to block the dragon fire with near flawless precision leaving the searing smoke and corpse filled hallways crawling with master shield wielding goblins including most of their surviving weapon lords and crossbowmen. Worse yet a single troll which must have sold its soul to Armok in return for its godlike agility had also survived the dragon fire and was now tearing down the only thing that was standing between them and the soft underbelly of the fortress which was a flimsy wooden door that was just outside the reach of that berserk dragon's breath. With dragon fire billowing in all directions standard military intervention was unthinkable.

This is where we made our second mistake. We let loose the ancient vampire hammerlord we had been holding prisoner down in the west wing for years. Her prison lay just beyond the wooden door the troll was now bashing into splinters and thus it seemed far too convenient a solution not to try it. This blood sucking monster was once the head of our military before we started to uncover the bodies of her victims and her dark secret became apparent. We crossed our fingers and hoped she would still obey orders. She had with her a pack of loyal pet war dogs that had been keeping her company in her prison over the years.

The undead hammer lord and her pack of dogs met the attackers head on as they burst through the door with unparalleled ferocity. The dogs served as little better than meat shields against the goblin elite but the ancient hammer lord had defensive skills that surpassed even her mastery of her weapon and she dodged and weaved between the enemies, crushing their bones and caving in their heads with every swing of her masterwork hammer. She drove the enemies back through the door and charged fearlessly into the searing smoke filled passages beyond, where the remaining goblin elite were still dodging dragon fire. There, surrounded by smoke, flame and highly skilled enemies she went into a martial trance and made her stand. One by one her enemies fell until the only thing left standing was the ancient vampire covered from head to toe in the blood of her fallen foes. It was truly a sight to behold. Somewhere in the skies above, Armok was surely smiling.

But now we have a new problem. We have a hungry, god tier, steel clad vampire loose in the fortress who recently lost about half a dozen of her only friends, her beloved pet war dogs... If we are lucky she will merely feed, slaying a few unlucky dwarves in their slumber. If we are unlucky, we will face a tantrum the likes of which we have never seen before...

[FallenAngel]

Well, my attempt to make a room underwater by dropping it failed. Turns out falling constructions deconstruct. On the plus side, nobody was hurt.

[Bastus]

I might have a melancholic vampire.
He refuses to drink, eat and most importantly work for more than a year now and he just refuses to starve or die of thirst so I looked him up and see that he is not hungry nor thirsty, poor little guy, can't starve himself to death. I might just keep him as some kind of mascot.

[WanderingKid]

+1 Melting Sky.  Nicely written.

[PDF urist master]

I'm going through pond grabber genocide right now.

[Aristion]

First two migration waves for my new fort has given me a legnedary+3 dyer and a legendary kiln user job thing.

[Melting Sky]

During the horror of yesterday's siege, the new dragon based defense system failed in spectacularly fiery fashion and as a last resort we were forced into releasing an ancient vampire weapon lord from her eternal prison. With unparalleled skill and brutality she single handedly laid waste to the goblin elite in the smoking ruins of the breached western gate. It was a truly a glorious battle the likes of which will live on in the legends of our people for centuries to come.

This brings us to our current dilemma. We now have a very unhappy, blood-soaked vampire hammer lord roaming free in the fortress on the verge of going insane with despair. With all her canine friends splattered up the walls, and having not fed in years, the now freed vampire has become the sole focus of our attention. We readied the rest of the military and tentatively followed her as she strode through the fortress, bracing for the price we would surely have to pay for freeing her. To our great surprise rather than descending into a murderous rage or feeding on the nearest sleeping dwarf, our old military commander limped to the hospital, laid down in a bed and fell ASLEEP as she waited for our chief medical dwarf to see to her injuries.

Perhaps we have misjudged our old commander. Despite her curse, she has proven to be the bravest among us and rather than taking terrible vengeance on us all for her lengthy imprisonment, she has instead decided to simply take a well earned nap, her first in centuries...

[Larix]

"The Clerk Urist McDiplomat has arrived."

Ho hum, that means there's a proper outpost liaison from last year somewhere. Looked it up in the unit list and the old liaison had spawned right at the rock face, between two trees. Freed them by chopping away the trees, but 1. diplomats still attach to the expedition leader who has no office and thus holds meetings in the outdoor meeting area _which spawns goddamn "pasture large creature" jobs nonstop_ and 2. they were going to insist on negotiating a trade agreement for the caravan that had already arrived.

So i made the duke the new expedition leader, to get the messed-up useless liaison off the map. In addition, after handing over some garbage to the caravan, i offered them a bunch of unacceptable trades, which got rid of _them_ in record time, too.

I think the pure pathing/placement signal-less logic is rather restricted in its possibilities - reading works o.k., but writing to a circuit is absurdly convoluted[1]. So i revised the memory functions to use difference logic, which seems to work alright - different-weight carts with speed-sensitive pathing, either for memory "read" or to keep read and set carts apart. Add to that use of z-level pathing and the basic memory functions _seem_ to be workable; the resulting circuits are huge and clunky, but at least nowhere near as wasteful and ridiculous as the earlier models.

[1] of course, "writing" can always be done by route management, it's writing by the running machine itself that seems problematic. Which means it should be an acceptable paradigm for ROM.

[Hetairos]

I'm going through pond grabber genocide right now.

Good luck with that. I lost way too many dwarves to those pests. Tossing snakes into the pond is recommended.