Print

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

[Fleeting Frames]

Stew is just the name of the 3-ingrident prepared meal. 2 is biscuit, 4 is roast. Check your kitchen; you'll know it to be set producting stew.

[Demonic Gophers]

@Demonic Gopher: Might want to look into magma-safe paper, from the stories you've been telling. Fire imp parchment would work, I imagine.

Heh, probably a good idea.  In fact, I think I'm going to add a breeding version of fire imps to the mod as a Molvokan pet - that seems like the sort of thing they'd have.  But Dreadsmear is only down to the first cavern so far, so fire imps won't be available for a while.  The library's going on the second floor of the Iron Manor, and hopefully it'll be more secure, but I probably ought to design some blast shields to protect the bookcases.

I've sent out two raiding parties to visit the humans of the Everlasting Confederacies (listed as 'skirmishing' on the world map).  The first raid killed several defenders at the hamlet Squidhot before being repelled, returning with no injuries.  The second returned from Conjuregrowl with a barrel of beer, a barrel of raspberry wine, a set of drums, and a few odds and ends.  They reported no fighting.  I'm not sure if the locals ran away when they saw my squad coming, or just threw them a welcome party, loaded them down with booze, and sent them on their way.

The first floor of the main apartment complex is almost finished, with 24 3x3 bedrooms.  Another three stories should house most of the population, with larger quarters build for individuals who earn special treatment.  Additional walls are under construction to channel intruders into areas where the fighting will cause minimal damage to the infrastructure.  Eventually each access point will start with a line of cage traps - not so much for defensive purposes, as to secure any high-value potential livestock (dragons, for example) that turns up before it gets killed.

Sluzhug the digger and Alango the crownsmith are currently locked into a comfortable nest with nothing to do but talk.  They've been romantically involved for about three years, but too busy to set a date for the wedding, and it's past time for them to get on with it.

Khar Menace is probably the happiest individual at Dreadsmear, and certainly the most dangerous, even without considering her lethal slime.  She spends all of her time within her containment suite, and most of it sparring.  Her current training partner, Alango of house Scourge, is now a wrestler of legendary skill and is surely near the peak of her physical capabilities.  Soon, Khar can take on a new student.  Alango deserves some rest after spending so long keeping the Menace happily occupied, but she will surely make a valuable addition to one of the raiding squads. 

EDIT: More gray langurs.  This time, sparring soldiers intercepted most of them in the rocky wasteland south of the main settlement.  No significant damage done, but Speaker Sturok Monstrous (mayor equivalent) got several nasty bites.  He's currently enraged, and awaiting medical attention.  "He feels pleasure due to spilled blood.  He feels satisfied upon improving wrestling.  He doesn't feel anything after experiencing trauma."

[TheFlame52]

@Demonic Gopher: Might want to look into magma-safe paper, from the stories you've been telling. Fire imp parchment would work, I imagine.

Heh, probably a good idea.  In fact, I think I'm going to add a breeding version of fire imps to the mod as a Molvokan pet - that seems like the sort of thing they'd have.  But Dreadsmear is only down to the first cavern so far, so fire imps won't be available for a while.  The library's going on the second floor of the Iron Manor, and hopefully it'll be more secure, but I probably ought to design some blast shields to protect the bookcases.

When I added fire imps as a playable race I added smoke weed, a fireproof pig tail substitute. If you do the same you could have fireproof clothes as well.

[Demonic Gophers]

Yeah, I was thinking about adding ash vine as a cloth source in evil regions.  Molvokans have a webbing caste, and ideally would make a lot of their clothes out of iron-silk, but it's always nice to have options.

I sent a raiding party back to Squidhot in early Spring.  Almost immediately after they left, a human siege arrived.  I like to think they had scouts watching Dreadsmear, and moved in when they thought the settlement was vulnerable.  The invaders didn't realize that raiding squads are made up mostly of expendable recruits, not the most powerful warriors.  Although it hardly mattered, in the end.

I stationed a squad to keep an eye on each of the entry zones - mostly groups that don't mix well with others, like the Torchers and Glacier Squad.  Most of the rest lined up at the southern border, closest to the siege.  This force included everything from expendable 'claws' to the elite Hellfire trio; only Khar Menace and her current student remained on training status.  A siege of 19 humans wasn't worth breaching her containment, even if almost half of them were archers and crossbowmen.  They waited near the southern wall, and two archers wandered in to scout one at a time.  But as Warlord Shenik was fighting the second scout, she saw the main invasion force moving in and decided to charge.

Shenik Ruthless skittered through a hail of bolts and arrows with stunning speed and nimbleness, for a creature of her size.  Several invaders panicked merely from the sight of her rush; the others were hopelessly outmatched.  She danced through the army, brushing aside attacks with her shield while her great axe flicked out to sever limbs and split skulls. Occasionally she sent one sprawling with a kick from one of her six feet, bracing with the other five to put more power into the blow.  Most of the fight was obscured by clouds of poison and sleeping gas, with only the trail of corpses and a few flying limbs visible.  The other warriors rushed to catch up, but Shenik left only mopping up for them.  She killed 13 of the invaders herself.  She may need to lead from the rear in future invasions, if other fighters are to get any real combat and earn a place in the inner circle.  With eight notable kills, Shenik has gotten a title: the Doomed Moistness of Virtues.

A bit later, the raiders returned with a few goods and some livestock from Squidhot.  No sheep, unfortunately; Warlord Shenik would desperately like to get sheep cheese added to the menu.  Interestingly, examination of the bodies showed that the invaders were NOT from the Everlasting Confederacies, our raiding target.  Instead, their armor bore the pear tree emblem of the Confident Union, which was at peace with us until now.  The Confident Union has several small hamlets that are much closer than any of the Everlasting Confederacies' settlements.  Perhaps one of them has sheep.

A few of the Molvokan fighters are quite upset from watching Shenik's slaughter, and she was a bit horrified by the death and destruction, at first.  Has anyone done solid research on how the different personality traits influence emotion reactions to violence?

[Fleeting Frames]

There's this thread.

[Kagus]

When I added fire imps as a playable race I added smoke weed

Every day?

[Rafatio]

Strange things are going on. Everyone here has a tomb, just their coffin in the vague hope that loose teeth get stored before the owner dies and so I know how many coffins are needed worst case. It seems I left a few tombs unowned once everyone had theirs assigned, checking now they're owned by goblins, who are currently sieging again. I haven't had a friendly goblin for years, these are definitely enemies, why are they claiming my coffins? From the other side of the gate even?

[Demonic Gophers]

I haven't had a friendly goblin for years, these are definitely enemies, why are they claiming my coffins? From the other side of the gate even?

The front-line soldiers don't think the siege is going to end well for them?  "After you kill us, please give us a decent burial!"


After several trips that met no resistance and returned with minor loot, Dreadsmear's raiders fought the Confident Union at Reliefplagues on 14 Malachite 304.  It's a human hamlet, but most of the defenders were ferazils.  They even had a Molvokan traitor among their number!  This led to a tougher battle than expected, and Dreadsmear lost its first fighter to a ferazi warrior.  But the raiders avenged her death, secured victory, and returned with several books and other treasure.  Unfortunately, the quest for sheep remains unfulfilled.

In early Fall, the Confident Union sent another siege to Dreadsmear.  Shenik Shield was nearby when the Union scouts arrived, and immediately sent her squad rushing in to engage them before they could report back.  Unfortunately, the main invasion force arrived before reinforcements could make it to the eastern border, and several of her fighters were cut off from support - facing roughly 40 human soldiers, in all.  Uzhu Merge was swarmed by the invaders, and finally slain by a lasher with a silver whip, but killed several of them before they brought him down.  His body now rests in an iron coffin, and someday he will be given a proper warrior's tomb.  Two more fighters were also down, with numerous cuts, when Warlord Shenik Ruthless and Hellfire Squad arrived.  Even with more backup continuing to stream in, it was a messy fight, but no more Molvokans died and the invasion was thoroughly crushed.  Warlord Shenik's kill count is up to 23 human invaders, along with a giant and a few gray langurs.

The Fall caravan arrived, camped out at the trading depot, and left without ever unpacking their goods and trading.  The farms and orchards are enough to prevent starvation, but the absence of fresh, varied supplies will be bad for morale that has already taken a blow from two citizens' deaths.  Several people were deeply disturbed by the sight of the battle, as well.  The unhappiest of the lot, Olazra Line, has been sent to train with Khar Menace and her current student in the containment facility.  Hopefully she can talk (or beat) some sense into him.  If nothing else, the assignment should keep him from seeing anything else too upsetting until he calms down.

At the beginning of winter, Sluzhug the Digger and Alango the Crownsmith suddenly realized that they are married, although neither of them remembers holding a wedding.  They're now sharing a room, which opens up a space in the Iron Manor.  With four human kills and a kobold to her name, and 'expert' grade striking skill, Otok Magic of Hellfire squad has earned a place in Dreadsmear's inner circle.  The newly available room will go to her, and she's now entitled to a weapon and shield.  Otok is partial to war hammers, and Warlord Shenik has promised her a masterwork of steel as soon as possible.  Until then, she can select an iron hammer from the arsenal.  She may have call to use it soon, as more human scouts have been spotted near the border.

The current intruders must be from the Everlasting Confederacies.  No emblem has been spotted on their armor, but after the last two failures, surely the Confident Union wouldn't be foolish enough to send a single small squad of unarmed cavalry against Dreadsmear.  Even their crossbowman leader is no real threat, and most of his recruits are panicking without so much as setting eyes on a single Molvokan defender.  But if they're the advanced force from a larger army, there may be an actual fight coming.


I might end up using DFHack to assign marriages to more of the population, but first I'll try sticking more people into the nest and see if it was just a fluke that Sluzhug and Alango refused to advance their relationship.  I don't remember exactly when I locked them in there, but I think it's been over a year.

EDIT: The crossbowman missed his first shot, got his throat torn out, then his neck broken, then generally mangled, then broken ribs through his heart, and finally his head obliterated.  The siege promptly ended.  Two recruits and a horse also died, but the fight took less than a week and none of Dreadsmear's squads even had to be ordered into position.

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

I began a new fort and got new legendary stone crafters within my first two migrant waves. And five fish cleaners.

[Larix]

I tried out ballistic launches of transterminal minecarts (carts with speeds past the normal 2,7 tiles per step limit, achieved by frontal collisions between different-weight carts: under some conditions, momentum is conserved, which can result in a speed increase of up to +100% in every collision; the effect can be "stacked").

The main difficulty is providing enough airspace to allow the speedy cart to actually get anywhere near its potential. I have a 3x3 embark and only had 110 tiles of horizontal space for the launch. A two-tier transterminal cart (initial speed ~900 000, split into equal vertical and horizontal components of ~0,7*initial upon launch) was still rising rapidly when it banged into the embark border 69z above the launch ramp. The ramp was 57z underground, the collision 12 z above. Carving out the underground flight path was a massive nuisance.

A very rough back-of-the-envelope approximation suggests the cart would be able to reach an apex height of ~120z above launch and would cover a distance of about 500 tiles in the jump. For comparison: a "conventional" fastest cart reaches an apex height of 25z and jumps about 150 tiles.

Carts used: bloodthorn loaded with a sylvite block (61) -> peach(31) -> cherry (17). There's room for improvement, but getting sufficient vertical space tends to turn into a mini-project of its own and quite a bit more horizontal space is absolutely required; our result is still very close to the theoretical "no-gravity" flight path which would barely achieve 75z over that little distance. That the trajectory didn't flatten much is due to transterminal physics - the cart loses 14900 speed vertically per tick (10 000 transterminal friction + 4900 gravity), but also 10 000 horizontally (transterminal only); a tile is 50% higher than it is wide, so a 45° trajectory means a gain of 2z height over 3tiles horizontal. The point of collision was reached after 22 steps of flight, which by my calculations means the cart was still moving at transterminal speed on the vertical axis.

[Amorphage]

Did a fort reclaim on one of the worldgen forts. Started poking around and ended up finding the reason the fortress was lost, a web-spitting FB by the name of 'Vesh' in one of the blacksmith rooms close to the top of the fort.
The thing is, they've just been... sitting there, in that room, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure before i forbid every single door to that room in a fear-filled frenzy a dwarf actually walked in there and nothing happened?
Now I'm just very carefully trying to set up my fort and discreetly setting up a quick military while Vesh just sort of sits around... thinking about whatever forgotten beasts think about, I guess?
Hasn't even broken anything in the room, either, and is listed as 'current resident', probably on account of the fact I reclaimed the fort while they lived here.

[KittyTac]

Going to start a draconian camp. We will raid everything around us. Burn it all!

[Foxite]

In my latest fort, the first elven caravan is, for a change, not greeted with a huge wooden defense, but this time one made out of bricks. However, the place is still riddled with logs from the trees that were cut down to make room for the structure.

[ChairmanPoo]

I´m playing a downsized DF game (as stated before, I´ve reduced the popcap on my forts to 30-40 as to preserve FPS). So... in this particular world most civilizations barring dwarves and goblins are extinct. My starting fort was pretty much the rebirth of dwarven civlization, and I think there are some human necromancers holed up somewhere but that´s about it.

So... I´m establishing a number of small forts as to revive my civ (plus, once they are well established and subsequently retired they tend to flourish by themselves, reaching over 100 pop). In my current one the idea was to make it a center of the arts. Unfortunately, due to the forementioned problem of mass extinction, I get no itinerant scholars. Also dwarven caravans dont seem to be trading codexes as usual.

Soo... what I´m having to do is raid goblin sites for their books. WHich mostly concern the events on goblin sites. So my great library is basically a compendium of goblin fanfic.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Thob Silveryfroze my hunter, slayer of Bravequests the Gill-Ruin of Vising the giant cave spider is finally out of hospital after 4 months. He's stood in the centre of the tavern looking like a total hero. His arm is mangled, his head is dented and his beard is torn apart but unlike several civilians and the entire military, he's alive to tell the tale.

Someone build that guy a tomb before he keels over.