Hi!
My latest fortress is still extremely young, just in its third year, but there have already been some interesting events. Some of them are centered around what I am about to call the channel of doom.
I usually have my fortresses grow slowly, starting with fishing and plant gathering food production and eventually reaching the underground river in the second or third year, maybe. This time, I wanted to do things a bit differently, so I decided to make a channel from the surface river to a cave I dug out in the mountain next to my fortress. Putting in a floodgate and linking it to a lever, I thought I was all set.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that a channel filled with water could also be instrumental in the creation of a permaflood. So, I opened the flood gate then closed it - and nothing happened. The farming area was permaflooded. Fortunately, I had put several safety channels in place, so only that small extra cavern was lost.
After that disaster, I decided to return to my old habits. But in the second year, I figured I should get rid of that stupid permaflood. The only possibility I saw was a cave-in. So, I sent in a miner to dig out more of the cave.
However, I made another stupid mistake forgetting that permafloods are still expanding. Fortunately there was another layer of channels to safe me from certain doom. But the miner decided that when the water came he should step forward instead of going back to the dry tiles behind him.
The result: The permaflooded area increased by a few tiles and I had a dead miner and a precious pick at an unreachable location. These things really annoyed me, especially since an encounter between a hunter and a pack of wolves earlier has prompted me to create my first general tomb, so there was a coffin already waiting. And picks are valuable, too.
So, while ordering the creation of some copper spare picks, I sent the remaining miner in there to dig out enough space to create a cave-in. The problem was, penetrating the permaflooded area would have been a bother and the area within the mountain where the channel ran wasn't very long.
I dug out an area that seemed big enough, but because the mountain side was uneven, I wasn't really sure. Actually, I already planned on how to breach the permaflooded area in order to get a bigger area, when finally, after long minutes of waiting, I "heard the deep rumbling from the mountain". With new optimism I waited, and finally, there was the cave-in I had hoped for.
I scrolled over to the site - and there was a dwarf right next to it!!!! A mechanic, as I learned from the announcements, probably out to get some of the stones from the newly excavated area (why he wanted to go there is beyond me). It was too late, of course, the dust was there and the mechanic got knocked unconscious. What was even worse, he got knocked right into the channel!!! Needless to say he drowned within a few seconds never regaining consciousness.
There was one positive thing: The cave-in did destroy the permaflood, so my dwarves were able to bury the rotting miner and retrieve the pick. The negative thing was, of course, that now I had one more dead dwarf and the mechanic was in a location that was unreachable (you can't block outside channels, so I can't unflood it).
Well, I tried all I could to retrieve the corpse, building bridges next to it and even one directly on top of him (but they wouldn't build that one, only stand there doing nothing, not even cancelling the job), but it was no use. This also taught me that outside channels do not freeze, even if the outside river is frozen solid (^_^;;
But the fun at that channel wasn't over yet. Shortly thereafter, I learned that racoons visit that map. Fun thing was, the first interesting stuff they saw were the clothes of the drowned mechanic in the channel. Another lesson I learned is that racoons can't swim in that game, at least not good enough to plunder. So, I had three racoons standing on the side of the channel and on the bridges next to corpse, looking greedily at the stuff they couldn't reach. I could have ignored them if their presence didn't scare any dwarves who wanted to leave my fortress since they were too close to the main entrance. So I drafted a random dwarf and stationed him at the bridge. Thus, the mechanic's corpse got company of a racoon corpse as one of the racoons fell into the channel, dying.
A little while later, another band of racoons tried to rob the channel. the corpse had already rooten away, but the clothes were still there. This time, before I really noticed, some dogs some immigrant has brought there had decided to put an end to the menace. The end result was one more racoon decaying in the channel along with a pet dog also rotting away in that channel (note that it is always that single tile where the mechanic drowned, because it is surrounded by bridges). Of course, the remaining racoons also died, but they didn't end up in the channel.
So, we are in the third year, the clothes are still in the channel which is still flooded. I am wondering what will happen next there.
BTW, once I am finished trapping my main entrance, I think I will fill the former farm- to- be with stonefall traps in case I get some curious siegers.
I hope this is somewhat entertaining for some.
Deathworks
Author
Topic: The channel of doom, an early experience (Read 3939 times)