I have taken my first tour of Workclench and realized that I am going to have my work cut out for me as overseer. We made the mistake of approaching from the southwest, where piles of corpses, many years old, lie to rot in the sun. The stench of death permeates this place.
http://imgur.com/HAO6HnqDespite this, the grandeur of Workclench stills grips my greedy dwarven soul. A mighty fortress, guarded by ballistae and huge drawbridges. surrounds the entrance to the main underground fortress complex. Beautiful engravings adorn every wall from floor to ceiling. The hardened militia struts about in suits of masterfully-worked adamantine. Yet this fortress seems at the razor edge of disaster.
First, booze stockpiles were ridiculously low upon my arrival.
http://imgur.com/Iw53uO9150 urists of booze is not nearly enough to service a fortress of 187 dwarves for more than a month or so. I immediately ordered the stills to churn the alcohol out as quickly as they could. There is plenty of water in Workclench, so dehydration would not have been an issue. The morale hit could have ended us all, though - this fortress already seems just about ready to blow its lid. This happened just about the same time I arrived:
http://imgur.com/ooF5JgsThis sickened me to my stomach. He punched a cat's head to pieces... AFTER calming down. And then reminisced over his fine dining room. Maniac.
On top of the problems with booze and cat-killing is a general lack of productivity. Most of the many workshops I see are lying derelict and unused. An return to our full industrial capacity is one of my pledges as overseer.
However, the economy was quickly forced into the back of my mind by a flurry of death messages.
http://imgur.com/YW4r5zMThe cat-splattering hinted that a tantrum spiral was a possibility... but this was clearly the beginnings of one. Right in the most populated area of the fortress, too.
Merciful Armok, there's blood all over everything!
http://imgur.com/a/gOGobThis was something I was less than prepared to deal with. My first idea was to send the militia into the bloodbath, in the hopes that the mad miner would attack one of them and be taken down in retribution. I quickly reconsidered. Firstly, this miner would certainly get the first strike, and he's deadly enough with that pick that it would be putting valuable militiadwarves in unnecessary danger. Secondly, while the militia is Workclench's best defence against outside threat, they could be a huge liability in a tantrum spiral. Morale is pretty low among the veterans, and if one of them lost it down in the bloody meeting area, they would cause much more carnage than that miner had. Instead, I decided to send the militia off to train in their training area above the fortress, and ordered a roof built over it to reduce the morale hits from the frequent rain.
With the militia an ineffective solution, I considered other ways to halt the mounting carnage in the meeting hall. I'm sure if this had been our king, or some great dwarven lord, the problem would have vanished, but I'll admit it... I have no idea how to combat a tantrum spiral.
I end up just ordering all the workshops into emergency build, ordering a ton of gold to be mined in the lower caverns, getting the clothing industry running again, ordering trees chopped, and the like. By making sure every dwarf in the fortress has a job to do, it keeps the working dwarves out of the meeting area. Once I unpause from ordering all this work done, the number of idlers drops significantly, and the meeting area clears out a bit.
Still a lot of children playing there, but what can you do?
Besides, the kids are some of the worst offenders:
Truly a screwed-up fort.
Anyways, the carnage dies down after a bit. Quite a few dead, but work progresses. Many statues, coffins, and suits of armour are being made... and the roof I've ordered over the training area nears completion. Duck, all the while, weakly attempts to report on the madman who beat him up. Justice is very slow in Workclench.
http://imgur.com/a/yciv1A rather uneventful month passes. Uneventful by Workclench standards, at least; one mason spends the entire month beating up a dog in the meeting hall. Of all the dwarves to escape the bloodbath, it's the creepy dog-beater.
The calm is broken by some trouble in caverns. I ordered the gold down there mined out to keep the miners away from the meeting area, but foolishly failed to consider the dangers the caverns themselves posed. One of our own former overseers is being attacked by a crocodile!
http://imgur.com/a/csIP2I dispatched the militia to help...
http://imgur.com/a/C6mZ0But they were too late to save poor Xub313. A few years ago he held the fate of this entire fortress in his hands... and thanks to my bungling, he's now a smear of blood on a crocodile's fangs.
The militia makes short work of the croc once they finally make it all the way down into the caverns, but the sight of the dead overseer is simply too sobering for a dwarf like me. I hit the booze stockpiles after this debacle, and go to sleep for a week.
When I awake, the fortress population is two lower, but I've long since grown used to murders in the meeting hall. The monotony of work and death is only broken elven merchants arrive. As if this fort didn't have Their diplomat greets our fine duchess, gives a long speech about the affairs of the outside world...
http://imgur.com/a/TGsyq (Okay, let's not mess with the Empire of Joking!)
And then their traders settled into our trade depot to make some deals.
War animals seemed like a fine way to keep the populace safe, as they don't run the risk of going completely batshit crazy like our militia does, so I bought a few of the stronger-looking animals (a gigantic panda, a grizzly bear, and a leopard) and ordered our animal trainers to war-train them for the glory of Workclench.
Around the same time as this, more murder-sprees started breaking out all over the fortress. The following images are a sort of combat log montage, so you don't need to read them all, but...
http://imgur.com/a/Ea1sL http://imgur.com/a/WTwJIhttp://imgur.com/a/vw2uWhttp://imgur.com/a/03tJ3...they really highlight how nasty a place Workclench can be.
Up to this point, my reign has been far from a grand one. A great many dwarves have died, and while I've gotten production going again and had many objects of great value created, I feel rather glum about how my name is going to go down in history. The only thing that can cheer me up when I'm in a mood like this is the look on an elf's face when the gigantic panda he raised from a cub tears him to shreds in the trade depot of a hellish fortress!
To be honest, I've never actually seen that look before, this is sort of a new situation for me. But I feel like that would be a suitable enough dwarven victory to make my rule a little bit more memorable.
http://imgur.com/a/6EdmpI pasture the leopard, grizzly bear, and gigantic panda near the trade depot and order the archers to open fire. But whether it's the war training we dwarves gave them, or the lingering influence of the elves that raised them, the animals refuse to fight and simply wander away to look for bamboo.
The archers still kill the elves, but it takes all the joy out of it. What are we going to do with all this junk, anyways? This operation has been a real flop.
As what was to be my great victory crumbles into an embarrassment, I feel that my time in Workclench must soon come to an end. My other achievement, the roof over the barracks, also proves to have been ineffectual when a spearmaster is punched to death by a militia captain.
http://imgur.com/a/vw6cVThe fight also causes most of the militia to fall into the waterfall device. Truly an embarrassing debacle. I have a wall torn down to allow them exit, which unfortunately breaks the finely-made contraption some previous overseer had spent so long building.
Head in my hands, I decide to abdicate as overseer. I know not who will replace me, but I hope their rule is a more fruitful... or longer... one than mine.
And that they so something about the waterfall machine. It's still broken.
End of Paddywagon's Diary.
Author
Topic: Parallel Fortresses Succession Game. | Finished (Read 87816 times)