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Roll back to before Taupe's disastrous turn

Keep going and see what happens

Let it die

[mikethete]

I will declare the best design to be ''the one that's implemented without causing a nightmare-inducing chain of events in the fortress''

Where's the fun in that though?

[ImagoDeo]

I guess conscription is fine. My main concern was that my dwarf would still be alive by my turn, but I guess that's not completely necessary. I can accommodate it. Go ahead and draft 'im.


Journal of ImagoDeo

1st of Granite, 202

You know, I really don't blame Mr Frog for everything that's happened. He was pretty much forced into this from what I hear, and he never intended any harm to anyone. I don't know if I even believe the rumors about Rakust's death. He just has such a good heart - I know, because I saw it in his eyes, despite the fact that he wouldn't make eye contact more than one tenth of the time. That was when he asked me to make some crossbows.

They're rather easy to make, fortunately. I was never that fond of ranged combat, myself - better to put a spear straight through the enemy's teeth. Something about the crunching of the skull and the gurgling sound they make when their brains slide slowly down their throats...

Ah, but that's goblins. Maybe crossbows will be better for fighting mutants... and... other things.

I've been too busy to talk to anyone in the fort about the new year. A few days ago I heard that Splint was eyeing the position of overseer; he's a military dwarf like myself, so I'd be happy to see him take the spot. Efficiency and solidarity - that's what the military is all about. No mucking around. No mistakes. No half measures.


3rd Granite, 202

Splint has officially claimed the post of overseer. He said something about sticky notes and added a curse that I won't repeat here, in case any of my potential progeny ever read these journals. Honestly, that was the one thing I disliked about the military: consistent swearing. It's hardly ever necessary to get a point across. And with goblins, spears do that much better. (Ha ha.)

In any case, Splint's been asking me about my history in The War of Beasts. I told him the truth: that I was one of the 1500 who charged the ramparts at The Earthen Swamps in the late winter of 198, and that I was one of the 500 who survived; that I put my spear through sixty-nine of the green-skinned wretches, and that I would again take up a spear if he needed me. He told me that I would most certainly be needed, and that this time no holy crusade against goblin torture would send two-thirds of my comrades to their deaths - instead I would defend myself and my home against mutants and worse.

I requested a month to allow my wife, pisskop, to get used to the thought of having her husband in the military again, and he granted my request. In the meantime I have no doubt I'll stay in shape; there are still a lot of boulders littering the halls that need moving.

Oh, I also saw Mr Frog today in the forge area. He was sitting in the corner staring at the wall. I decided not to bother him. He was never really cut out for leadership.

Spoiler: OOC (click to show/hide)

Yes, I did download the save and crack open legends. And yes, pisskop is a female dwarf married to my male dwarf. We've been married since 190, right after my dwarf came of age. (I'm now 24. Got sixty-nine goblin kills when I was 21. F#$@ yeah.)

[Monitor Lisard]

I have the same concern about the survivability of my dorf, but this would be really fun characterwise, so... I guess it's fine.

>"Lizzy" Drunkenwheel

Ah, what a nice day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing- Oh fuck no! Please, no!!! NOT FUCKING AGAIN! Why?! WHY? I barely managed to forget their horrible screams and!... Oh, please, why?!  WHY DID THIS... Why? Why did this Splint guy decide to conscript me? I haven't told anyone here about my past. Ugh, fuck! At least, I'll get to be closer to the other soldiers.

It appears that I'm not the only dwarf drafted here. Some ImagoDeo guy (married) is taking up a spear as well. His name kinda rings a bell... Anyway, he's a decorated war veteran and a gobbo slayer like no other.

[Mr Frog]

Did anyone else have a realization along the line of "Did we just plan to make some sort of Auschwitz camp to make zombie mutant attack dogs?"
Or was that just me?

Soooo that's going in the quote bank

I will declare the best design to be ''the one that's implemented without causing a nightmare-inducing chain of events in the fortress''

Either you've been playing the game wrong or I have

- mutant dog gas chamber design snip -

I just went into arena mode and dropped 128 dogs onto 128 other dogs from 1z. The only injuries any of them suffered that weren't completely-superficial was a single broken toe and one dog that hit its head and was very briefly rendered unconscious. I think my design can be concluded to be safe, and it gives an easy way of moving dogs from the "unaffected" cell to the "mutant" cell like you say.

Although, it appears that mutant animals are sadly of questionable efficacy against anything with armor due to essentially being glass cannons that cannot last in protracted combat; I kept throwing huge waves of mutant dogs at a group of 12 decently-armored and skilled goblins and the goblins kept winning despite being outnumbered almost 3-to-1. They fare a bit better against Spawn due to the latter being unarmored but cannot inflict fatal injuries to them.

However, if you want to get REALLY crazy, we could totally put dwarven soldiers into the gas chamber. It'd be unsustainable in the long run due to the inevitable deaths causing unhappy thoughts and scaring away migrants, but it would work short-term. Mutant soldiers are INCREDIBLY effective. They don't even have to be trained -- just dump unnecessary migrants into the gas chamber after suiting them up.

yes, pisskop is a female dwarf

Jesus Christ, I swear I checked and thought I saw "he" in his description. Mea culpa.

[Monitor Lisard]

>all that supersoldier and gas chamber talk

The Overseer MUST hold ALL the powers in the fortress. As a regular spear has only one sharp point, so does the will of a nation. Nobility or even royalty matter nothing when we are facing the threat of being destroyed, or, even worse, incorporated into one of the barbaric societies. The only things that mean are brute force and the will to fight... Only through the complete militarisation of our nation we will be able to sucessfully struggle against out enemies. The party in that case is the phalanx, the sharp edge of a spear, guided by the common will of all the dwarves.

Some of our old traditions keep us from becoming the dominant race of the world. We must rethink some of our ways to improve our chanses in the upcoming Great War.

Among the so-called "sentient" races, only dwarves can be considered truly sapient. The humans with their distorted, primitive way of thinking are indeed no better then the vicious goblins. As for the elves, they are nothing more then bipedal animals driven by hatred towards dwarvenkind, a disgusting pack of nature-loving rats. The mutants aren't even worth mentioning. While the latter monstrosities must be eliminated at all costs, the first two should be enslaved to provide the nation with a pool of cheap workforce required for the completion of any grand designs that our nation might come up with.

These truths are self-evident, but the nation is still on it's way to accepting and fully implementing them. Our ideas are yet to be promoted, by means of word and action alike.

Cities and towns, villages and hamlets! We are sending our adepts everywhere to archieve the ultimate goal. This time, the outpost of Clobbermountains was chosen for our next strike. It looks like the perfect target for propaganda. Today, a minor settelment. Tomorrow, a large military base ready to take orders directly from the Leader!

For the glory of all Dwarves!

[Splint]

Awesome. I'll have you guys inducted once the spring migrants arrive. Might not be able to get started again until this afternoon, looks like my dad's getting ready to do some yardwork and that inevitably means I'll have to help unless his leg isn't bothering him too much.

@ Mr Frog: Now, see, having animals to drop the next batch on is where the problem comes in: Most of the group before will probably be dead (spawn in particular won't stop until they're all dead unless they and the mutants ignore eachother,) which means very little in the way of cushions. They might be hulked out, but dogs are still dogs, complete with all the disadvantages of that the mutations fail to remove.

Plus, we have to wait for our dogs if we're gonna do that. Can't just poof them into existence.

Ultimately it'd probably be the definition of impractical, if only because of how long it takes to get more mutation-ready animals of sufficient size.


EDIT: Into month two now. Seems the cloud's a monthly or possibly a roughly bi-weekly occurrence.

[mikethete]

However, if you want to get REALLY crazy, we could totally put dwarven soldiers into the gas chamber. It'd be unsustainable in the long run due to the inevitable deaths causing unhappy thoughts and scaring away migrants, but it would work short-term. Mutant soldiers are INCREDIBLY effective. They don't even have to be trained -- just dump unnecessary migrants into the gas chamber after suiting them up.

Wait a second, does the mist affect FB's and other randomly genned fun?

[Mr Frog]

However, if you want to get REALLY crazy, we could totally put dwarven soldiers into the gas chamber. It'd be unsustainable in the long run due to the inevitable deaths causing unhappy thoughts and scaring away migrants, but it would work short-term. Mutant soldiers are INCREDIBLY effective. They don't even have to be trained -- just dump unnecessary migrants into the gas chamber after suiting them up.

Wait a second, does the mist affect FB's and other randomly genned fun?

It affects anything that's not a werebeast or vampire and has the GENERAL_POISON class. Can't remember if FBs have that.

@ Mr Frog: Now, see, having animals to drop the next batch on is where the problem comes in: Most of the group before will probably be dead (spawn in particular won't stop until they're all dead unless they and the mutants ignore eachother,) which means very little in the way of cushions. They might be hulked out, but dogs are still dogs, complete with all the disadvantages of that the mutations fail to remove.

Just dropped 256 mutant dogs from 1z, this time onto bare stone. Again, only negligible injuries all around -- about 4 broken extremities (toes, ears) but nothing remotely-vital. There were about 3 bruised lungs and 1 minor concussion, all of which cleared up quickly. I still think my design is pretty safe. Broken toes are really a minor detail considering that they'll be dead after a year anyways.
I do absolutely agree with you, though, that dogs will require numbers too great to be practical, which is why I recommend using unneeded migrants in full armor. It'll be difficult to maintain a continuous supply, but we'll only need a few at a time to do catastrophic damage to enemy troops, and they'll be durable enough to quite likely last the entire one-year time limit without replacing.


@Monitor Lisard

Wait, are our dwarves basically Nazis now? I was already going for a xenophobic authoritarian dictatorship but daaaaamn. What have I wrought!?

[TheBiggerFish]

However, if you want to get REALLY crazy, we could totally put dwarven soldiers into the gas chamber. It'd be unsustainable in the long run due to the inevitable deaths causing unhappy thoughts and scaring away migrants, but it would work short-term. Mutant soldiers are INCREDIBLY effective. They don't even have to be trained -- just dump unnecessary migrants into the gas chamber after suiting them up.

Wait a second, does the mist affect FB's and other randomly genned fun?

Oh Armok.
We're so doomed.
Also, biological FBs can be hit by their own extracts, so...Kinda worried.

[Mr Frog]

@TheBiggerFish:

That's part of why I put a one-year shelf-life on the syndrome -- if something entirely-unmanageable got turned I didn't want us to be forced to turtle for the rest of the fort's lifetime.

Also, before anyone asks: Spawn are immune, although due to an oversight on my part there may be a fringe case where a dwarf that's been infected with Spawnitis and subsequently mutated may eventually transform into a mutant Spawn. This would be bad, as they don't need to breathe and would not be killed by the ensuing organ failure.

[mikethete]

That's part of why I put a one-year shelf-life on the syndrome -- if something entirely-unmanageable got turned I didn't want us to be forced to turtle for the rest of the fort's lifetime.

Unless we get an organless FB,if that's even possible.

[Mr Frog]

That's part of why I put a one-year shelf-life on the syndrome -- if something entirely-unmanageable got turned I didn't want us to be forced to turtle for the rest of the fort's lifetime.

Unless we get an organless FB,if that's even possible.

I think most of the material-based FBs don't have organs, although I am fairly-sure that they wouldn't have the GENERAL_POISON tag, assuming any of them do. oh god oh god oh god

In any case, I think we can agree that should an organless FB appear, do not let it get to the surface. This is one hypothesis that we do not particularly need to test empirically.

[Monitor Lisard]

transform into a mutant Spawn.

!!FUN!! ensues.

@Mr Frog

By the way, that entry above was written on the spot, and I didn't have plans to elaborate it, so... If you want to incorporate it into the story somehow, you're free to use it, I really dig your creative writing.

[Mr Frog]

transform into a mutant Spawn.

!!FUN!! ensues.

@Mr Frog

By the way, that entry above was written on the spot, and I didn't have plans to elaborate it, so... If you want to incorporate it into the story somehow, you're free to use it, I really dig your creative writing.

eEEEeee don't compliment me i turn into a massive egobeast

But yeah, like I said, I was already kind of going for our civ being a xenophobic totalitarian regime so your entry more-or-less fits in anyways, although it kind of implies that it's just a small faction that wants to gas everybody, which... isn't actually mutually-exclusive with what I wanted to do anyways. It'd totally be possible for our civ to be extremely authoritarian to begin with but to have a faction that wants to take it even further into all-out militarisation and genocide.

[Taupe]

I will declare the best design to be ''the one that's implemented without causing a nightmare-inducing chain of events in the fortress''

Where's the fun in that though?

Well that still implies that we'll implement every single design and then draw conclusions...