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Roll back to before Taupe's disastrous turn

Keep going and see what happens

Let it die

[Splint]

And some proof for the doubters who may slink around.

[Ribbonfree]

((Man if he goes this insane when only one person died imagine what will inevitably happen when shit hits the fan in earnest...))

Excerpts from Ribbon's journal

It's impossible to know for sure how Rakust died, our overseers increasingly unsettling demeanor will most likely see to that. I speculate that she somehow found herself in the magma. The only means of death in this outpost that nobody could feasibly have witnessed. Its been a while since Frog declared the forges to be properly magma powered, and the timing does roughly line up with when Rakust went missing... But there's no need to start a witch hunt, I'm sure Frog had nothing for us but good intentions. Noel meanwhile has been admirably tough about it all, keeps his head in the accounting. Poor dear. He'll need his time to come to terms and that's completely understandable, but I'm sure he too will invariably come to accept what has transpired, like the rest of us. He did already ask for a memorial slab, after all, even if he continues to hold out on hope. Whether Frog will ever be sane enough to admit that the slab needs to be built will be an uncertainty for quite some time, I feel. Its as father explained to me back when he would carry me on his shoulders through the market:

"All of us have jobs, but even when a man is working he is not necessarily doing his job."

The liaison, named Rakust in a beautiful display of morbid irony, spoke at length to me about how his discussions with Frog went. It wasn't hard to get him to spill the beans, he seemed quite eager to speak with any of the girls in the fort about anything, and I had to politely laugh off a couple dozen overtures where he promised to rescue me from this 'hell hole'. Accurate description, but it's my hell hole. Anyways it seems there's a good market for all manner of luxury products back in the Mountainhomes, which should prove an advantage if Splint decides to act on it.

Yes, Splint. I am pretty sure everyone and their pet cat now realizes that a succession will be occurring sooner rather than later, and Splint seems to be the man for the job.

Ribbon,
20th of Moonstone

I... well, I am doing as I am told. As father would emphasize to me in my schooling years:

"When the higher ups tell you to do something you do it, my dear. Unless you can kill them."

I'm not much of a fighter by pedigree so I must make do with the former. Frog orders me to take up duty as a bonecrafter and butcher despite me not having experience in either field, I shall do it. It's a... fast process, silencing the piteous whimpers of the puppies with their limpid eyes and pouting expressions, gazing up at me with a serene and trusting innocence while I steadied the knife and...

Yes. Well. We have our meat and bones now. On a positive note I have a new coworker in the butchery shop in the form of that curious young woman named Lizzie, who is to be our new leatherworker despite also not having the prerequisite experience. A few conversations while moving the hides around revealed she has some hopes for how our fortress will develop. As in, big strong men she can take a delight in. I wonder why she didn't take up on the Liaison's charms. Perhaps he was too skinny.

I've also lost a good third of my best pencils, as Frog seems to be going through them at a freakish pace. At this rate we'll need to import pencils at a premium from the next caravan.

Ribbon,
14th of Opal

Splint is now our overseer. May Frog's tortured soul find peace with his hematite.

Ribbon,
28th of Obsidian

[Mr Frog]

((Man if he goes this insane when only one person died imagine what will inevitably happen when shit hits the fan in earnest...))

It's not just that she died, but rather that she died horrifically, in front of him, screaming for help that he couldn't render her, all entirely due to his own poor judgement. It was a bit too much guilt for his fragile little mind to process.

E: Also, I just want to emphasise to Splint that the Spawn are properly fireproof now, so it's safe to build magma traps without fear of accidentally creating an eternally-burning abomination that immolates both dwarves and FPS counters by mere proximity.

Love the journals everybody; keep it up!

[TheBiggerFish]

So tempted, but...Can't write journal on tablet.  Bluh.

[Splint]

Someone else can build an imitation of TRIBUTEWEAPON. Weaponizing fluids doesn't really interest me; more interesting to send in the troops and bask in the ocean of blood and giblets gently wafting 'round my waist.

[Ribbonfree]

I'll be playing around with a super weapon on my turn. I'm not really good at megaprojects so it's inevitably going to end badly.

[Splint]

Just keep it away from the trained soldiers. Those shits are a pain in the ass to replace, especially if they get melted.

[Mr Frog]

I'll be playing around with a super weapon on my turn. I'm not really good at megaprojects so it's inevitably going to end badly.

As long as you make sure that the fort is still technically standing by the time you're done, feel free to go absolutely apeshit with the ill-conceived superweapons. The more magma-spewing, mutated-cat-flinging abominations against engineering we have polluting the landscape by the time we're done, the better.

[Splint]

Funny you should mention mutants. I sort of have an idea for a semi-automated system involving floodgates and a bridge for a roof. And dogs. lots of dogs.

[Mr Frog]

Funny you should mention mutants. I sort of have an idea for a semi-automated system involving floodgates and a bridge for a roof. And dogs. lots of dogs.

I think I had a similar idea. Basically make a holding cell exposed to the open air with a toggleable floor (I'm actually thinking floor hatches, as a bridge would risk flinging the creatures away instead of letting them drop down) which drops the creatures inside to another cell a level below. Top cell contains waiting animals, bottom cell contains mutants. You keep the animals safely away from the mutants in the top cell until they're turned, at which point you drop them into the bottom, where they wait until you open a floodgate/lower a drawbridge to unleash them on nearby unfortunates. The only problem would be getting the mutants back inside the holding cell (I'm thinking you could use a kitten on a chain behind a lockable door as a lure).

[Splint]

Actually what I was thinking is using something that breeds reasonably quick but capable in a fight (such as animals can be,) and keeping them in a holding pen with a bridge roof that can be closed/opened to let the cloud in. Flood gates unleash the horde of expendable goons who will hopefully at injure the attackers by weight of numbers. If they win, great! Wipe out the stragglers, load in more mutts as needed (since they die after a year anyway, might as well use the surviving mutants for training dummies,) and repeat. Does require some micro and a shitload of dogs, but it could work out really well.

Or backfire horribly and result in a temporary dog-pocalypse.

[Mr Frog]

The benefit to my design, though, is that by keeping separate enclosures for mutated and unmutated animals with a mechanism to quickly transfer animals from one enclosure to another at will, you can continuously restock your mutants more-or-less as needed instead of first having to clear out all of your currently-existing mutants before restocking. With your design (at least if I'm understanding correctly), if you only have 2-3 mutant dogs left in the enclosure, it wouldn't be safe to put more unmutated dogs in to pend mutation without first either killing the dogs yourself, waiting for them to die naturally, or deploying them without the numbers required for them to do significant damage. That seems wasteful to me.

In any case, I am absolutely tickled pink that it hasn't even been 10 pages and we're already having a serious discussion on how to most efficiently expose living beings to mutagenic gas on a massive scale so that they can be used as disposable cannon fodder.

[Splint]

Unless they can break down the floodgates, the idea I had was to shut the fuckers out (unleash them into the countryside to attack the enemy, possibly from near the volcano mouth since the cloud likes to pass over that,) of the pen and reload it from an adjacent dog pen while the previous batch is deployed. Either they all die while handicapping the enemy, or whatever's left is put down (their injuries, if they even win, will probably make them unsuited for further use anyway,) all while a nice fresh batch of dogs is watching for the hatch to open and toxic  gas to fill the place.

That way, we don't need the enemy to be in the fortress. or near the entrance necessarily, and there's no risk of injury from a fall, since even a 1-z drop can prove fatal if the random number god is feeling grumpy (and we need the dogs in one piece until they make contact with the enemy.)

A secondary pen could be built with a bunch of cage traps and lures, to hold any intact mutants; but honestly, most would probably be too badly injured after a fight to be of much use even in distraction capacity, and anything bigger would take too long to reach adult size (since I assume there's a max size per life stage, puppies would be next to useless for this, necessitating adult dogs,) or are too unreliable to supply - big cats in particular would be very well suited to this, and survivors may even be somewhat reusable, but getting enough breeding pairs would be too unreliable.

This in turn means we're gonna need several metric fucktons of dogs.

[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''

[Splint]

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?

EDIT: First month of spring finished. Noel got some teeth knocked out by a giant toad, and Mikethete and I now have iron spears! Gonna wait on ImagoDeo and Monitor Lisard to get back to me on conscription, since we got some spare spears now.

In the meantime, I have crap to draw and Ivybolt 2.0 to plan...