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[mightymushroom]

Nishkikrost has been gradually culling its domestic animal population in order to stock the library with quires. (Goodbye, faithful worthless horses who pulled our wagon. Too bad you weren't a breeding pair.) Perhaps one day the writing materials will even become written material, but I'm not holding my breath. The slaughter is deliberately spaced out since no one had any Tanning skill and the overseer chose not to get ahead. As a side effect, the rendered fat was sitting in the kitchen and now we have a generous supply of suet cakes for the bird feeders: 'lavish' meals put together from a blend of three kinds of tallow and studded with alfalfa grains.

[Fleeting Frames]

Meanwhile, my waterways are limited to 1-tile tunnel of upstairs with an u-bend through grate.

@spazyak: Only if the hydra was a werebeast. Or zombie werebeast.

[Ametsala]

The hippie caravan was underwhelming*. I gave them a pot of prepared food worth more than their whole caravan, so maybe they'll understand to bring a better caravan next year. Plans for an elf aquarium are already being drawn in case they don't. First I thought I'd just turn them into a ☼roast☼ the next time they come with such a sorry excuse for a caravan, but the idea of making every worthless elven caravan the attraction of a clear glass aquarium sounds more compelling. The scholars can then study how long it takes the various fauna in those tanks to adapt to aquatic life.
Edit: Come to think of it, I could turn the aquariums into obsidian farms to make furniture for my tavern.

* In addition to the standard large grown jolly wood kindling and walnuts, they brought a great horned owl, a turkey, a wombat, and a giant flying squirrel...

What else?
Struck tetrahedrite, but been too busy melting caravanite to bother. I even bought a -gold crown- to melt, but as expected, a dorf put it on his head before I could designate it for melting.
A regular kea stole a slate block so now I know what to bait the giant ones with.
There's also a troop of troglodytes stuck in a single open space tile, so I got to do a bug report. Unfortunately they're in a bit of an inconvenient spot to use as archery targets. I'll figure out what to do with them when I'm done with the aquarium(s).

[Kagus]

Nishkikrost has been gradually culling its domestic animal population in order to stock the library with quires. (Goodbye, faithful worthless horses who pulled our wagon. Too bad you weren't a breeding pair.) Perhaps one day the writing materials will even become written material, but I'm not holding my breath. The slaughter is deliberately spaced out since no one had any Tanning skill and the overseer chose not to get ahead. As a side effect, the rendered fat was sitting in the kitchen and now we have a generous supply of suet cakes for the bird feeders: 'lavish' meals put together from a blend of three kinds of tallow and studded with alfalfa grains.

Y'know, for as classy as parchment is, I don't think I'd ever find myself making it instead of plant-based sheets. The process is just so much more complicated and expensive compared to the plant-mushing process (even discounting papyrus, which is basically cheating) that I don't think I could bring myself to do it. Not when I could make other things out of the leather, especially since each animal will only drop one hide regardless of how big they are.

I also find it funny that you can make bookbindings out of metal, wood and stone, but not actually leather.

[mightymushroom]

Well, it was partly for role-playing purposes. These are somewhat pretentious dwarves. And also, because it's something I hadn't done yet and I wanted to experience the supply chain. I don't have much call for leather military gear at the moment, so I figured may as well go for it. There's so many disparate reactions, though, I don't think I'll be making a regular practice of it.

The "book binding" is essentially a case for the pages, so it makes sense to use hard materials. Some books in our world may have the binding decorated (covered) with leather or its substitutes, but I've never heard of it being the primary material even for so-called leather-bound editions.

[vekar]

Brassorders was assaulted by a hydra (seven died), an ettin (5 dead) and then came the last death to date: our beloved librarian, she was made a scholar because one arm was ripped off via Hydra the last arm was horribly damaged. Well, all went really well till something snapped, she was the smartest dwarf in the fortress then one day just stood in the booze stockpile holding a silver goblet and started sobbing. She just stayed that way, even called a burrow order to see if that would work, nope... Well some quick digging and forging a tomb was built: a silver sarcophagus, an iron statue of her (ran out of silver bars) and a finely engraved walls. She died of dehydration just holding that silver goblet, just sobbed to death. Oh well, she was entombed behind a master crafted door with her own silver chest too, shame I was not able to bury her with that goblet.

Anyway, in other news one of my woodcutters (crippled by war) is about to snap, he is under... "Considerable" stress and lets leave it at that. Out of 120 dwarves about 1/4 of them have wounds one way or another, most of the "common" wounds being from giant monkeys. My dwarves got sick of waiting on them to drop dead out of trees and for some reason have taken a hunger to just killing every monkey they see, makes for a rather gruesome, gore streaked jungle. Oh well, we aint running out of monkey roasts anytime soon. A human in the fortress really got it bad, long story short was ordered for execution, dwarves nailed em, tore their guts out, human went running across fortress, almost got away... Dwarf just steps out of the stairwell and backhands the human into a wall and cuts their throat and walks away... Hell yes.

[Fearless Son]

I do literally all of these things. Stay strong, perfect-waterway bro.

When I make my falling pit traps, I also need to go and smooth the walls of the thing level-by-level as it gets channeled out.  Partly because it is harder to smooth those walls after the fact, but also because now that climbing is a thing it makes it practical to have flush surfaces that offer no purchase to falling goblins desperately flailing to avoid the upright spike traps far below them...

[Kagus]

I mean, you could just dig out an access hallway around the outside of the trap and smooth the walls from the wrong side... Bonus points for putting a fortification on each level and letting marksdwarves shoot at them on the way down. Completely unnecessary usage of resources, ho!


Not really sure what to do about my own fort. I mean, I've received a premonition of siege and dwarven idiocy, so I can make moves to prevent all that (and get my artifact shield back...), but would I feel good about doing that? Hmm.

The ethical considerations of letting this half-assed fort collapse to start another, even halfier-assed one... Or to struggle on a while longer and see if my bard-infested tavern can finally give me some training dummies for my chief medical dwarf, who is still wiping the blood off the mantle from the last, actually skilled head surgeon.

[StagnantSoul]

Huh, when I embarked one of those tents you find sometimes in adventure mode was sitting just a little ways away from the wagon, and now three human soldiers are visiting just sitting around the wagon and socializing with each other.

[Kagus]

I decided to end the fort. The siege didn't come this time around, so I had to improvise. I ordered my one squad of militia (including the commander, who refused to actually equip his uniform except when actively ordered to kill something... Some sort of conflict happening there, but at least he dropped the artifact shield inside the fort this time) to attack all the visitors in my tavern, which included some 15 assorted bards and poets, a couple mercenaries, and a lady consort.

Nothing like a good bloodbath to improve the mood, eh? Apparently, killing them opened up more available visitor slots, because the moment we put them to the sword we were immediately bombarded by a whole new pack of merryseekers and musicians.

I then turned my attention towards the dwarven caravan, which had gotten stuck on the trade depot and refused to leave. I'd had some issues with them since I wanted to move some wild animals between cages, but the moment a dwarf started transporting them the caravan guards would attack and execute the poor beastie...  So I sent in the clowns, and lots of death and maiming was had on both sides.

I then declared the fortress officially defunct and abandoned the whole sorry state of affairs. And to think, the liaison had just told us to appoint a baron... Hah!


By the by, as far as werebeasts go, a werecavy is not particularly frightening. Figures I'd get something like that when I actually want the fort to crumble to its end.

[anewaname]

It seemed that a lot of draltha were having kids so I took a look.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Draltha has given birth to triplets.
Draltha has given birth to twins.
Draltha has given birth to triplets.
Draltha has given birth to triplets.
Draltha has given birth to twins.
Draltha has given birth to triplets.
Draltha has given birth to twins.

There is an adult male, two adult females, and fifteen draltha children, stuck in three fungiwood trees in the middle of a cavern lake, along with a dead FB and three dead draltha kids.

[Larix]

I activated invaders and set the goblins' siege trigger to 2. Presumably that lowers the population requirement to 50, and we have 75. No goblins in a year and a half so far, but they don't seem very active in the world outside, either: the human diplomat reported a handful of settlements lost last year, but none this year; it was "the world is as ever" once again, just like with elves and dwarfs.
Combat tally so far - one pack of grey langurs, a giant, a cyclops, an ettin. We're totally overprepared with our eleven superlegendary melee soldiers, plus two in reserve. We also sent seven of the most martial-minded civilians to the barracks for a season so they stop complaining.

The human caravan is solidly bugged, stuck somewhere in limbo just off screen. The backup map entry has also become dodgy (seems there's an invisible unit close to the border there, too - dwarfs again ended up crawling through open tiles) and bugged up a dwarf caravan which fortunately later dislodged itself. I've switched to keeping the depot forbidden when the caravan is due - discards wagons but lets the walking units onto the map, in a completely random spot.

The metalcrafter gave birth while riding the patrol cart. Of course, the baby fell off the cart and was punted off the track on the next passage (survived with a smashed lower arm and landed in a tree, requiring a bridge and three floor tiles built to get her out). This should never have happened because the mother had the vehicle hauling labour disabled. I've no idea why she ended up riding the cart. Hopefully the sprog can handle the year before any treatment will happen.

Two diplomats got stuck standing on a bridge tile with "twigs" underneath. Such tiles are not passable, so i wonder how they ended up there - pushed by a passing animal or loitering around while the tree made a growth check and spawned some twigs? Demolishing the bridge and building a floor under the unit dislodged them.

[Fearless Son]

I mean, you could just dig out an access hallway around the outside of the trap and smooth the walls from the wrong side... Bonus points for putting a fortification on each level and letting marksdwarves shoot at them on the way down. Completely unnecessary usage of resources, ho!

I could, but that also presents certain dangers.  Under certain circumstances it is possible for invaders to fall through fortifications.  Too risky. 

I am confident the ten layer deep drop will be sufficient to kill most invaders.  If not, the upright steel spikes lining the bottom should make sure of it.  And if all else fails, I can rig up a magma-flooding system at some point (another reason not to have fortifications, magma overflow would be too much !!Fun!!)

[Eschar]

I am confident the ten layer deep drop will be sufficient to kill most invaders.  If not, the upright steel spikes lining the bottom should make sure of it.

Bonus points if this drop turns out to be the precise dimensions for the Shaft of Enlightenment. 

..wait, no, you should actually build one.

[TheFlame52]

I am confident the ten layer deep drop will be sufficient to kill most invaders.  If not, the upright steel spikes lining the bottom should make sure of it.

Bonus points if this drop turns out to be the precise dimensions for the Shaft of Enlightenment. 

..wait, no, you should actually build one.

That bug got fixed in 0.40.