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[Nopal]

<Deleted>

[Paddywagon Man]

If that's what sucking at drawing looks like, we'll need to come up with a new adjective for me... your artwork's great Nopal, thanks for the lovely comic!

And your Flaaffy evolved into a big strong Ampharos. We'll take care of it, don't worry.

[Paddywagon Man]

I'm mostly through the year, it's mid-November (or dwarven equivalent) now, but I'm going to be away for a bit. I tried to finish the year today but didn't manage.

Would you guys rather I finished the year in about a week or so, or posted the update and save now?

[Maximum Spin]

Looks like you guys still need players; I'd like a turn. Dorf me as Max, ideally a shearer/spinner, and give me your spare surviving Mareep-line members. I'll take care of Nopal's Ampharos if you haven't assigned it yet. I shall make wool from the dreams of androids.

[Paddywagon Man]

Awesome, I'm nearly done the year and I'll pass it along to you when I finish - pretty busy today but should finish tomorrow.

We have plenty of Ampharos.

[Paddywagon Man]

Sorry for the delay.

Finished the turn just now, post coming tomorrow (for real this time, hopefully)

And on an unrelated note, I love how optimistic dwarves are when it comes to their friends being "dead" vs "missing".

Urist: "Where's Bomrek? I haven't seen him since his spine was broken by a Lampent and he fell a hundred feet into molten lava."

Dishmab: "I'm sure he'll turn up soon."

[Nopal]

<Deleted>

[Paxiecrunchle]

[spoilerHaving dwarven pride is a lot like American pride. You shout how proud you are to be one, until you realize that the vast majority of them are complete and utter dumbasses.

Great thread, I'm strongly considering you getting this is signature you guys are almost worthy of the hall of legends.

[Paddywagon Man]

I see the battle won, and the weight on my soul is lifted. I feel the breath of Armok all around me as I melt into infinity...

Then I feel a tearing claw, rending at my astral self.

Incorporeal, confused, terrified, I struggle against my mysterious assailant, but to no avail. The light of infinity fades around me as my tattered essence is dragged screaming back to earth...


I snap out of the odd haze, my thoughts blurry for a second. Must be that battle against the Kite Fiends has me on edge. Close call, that. I pick up my trusty spear, there's still work to be done.



It isn't until I reach the barracks to continue training that something hits me. Everybody looks so... sad. And there's a familiar face missing.

Nopal!



His Flaaffy, lonely and dejected in the corner, evolves into an Ampharos with a sigh of malaise.

I turn myself from the depressing sight to further the battle against the demons. I won't risk anymore of our soldiers in open confrontations, but the remaining demons are mostly cut off from each other and trapped in their own little hidey-holes. Most of them can be dealt with by marksdwarves.

  -> 







With that, the caverns are reclaimed. Not very sporting - but last time I tried to be sporting we lost Nopal. But though the caverns are now safe, there are still demons a-plenty in Pocketball. The largest group, of fully thirty demons, is locked up in a hollow spire of stone.



I could theoretically do another marksdwarf assassination, but with that many demons it would be a tedious business. And a lot of the demons in that horde breath fire, rendering fortifications a less than ideal defence.

But inspiration strikes. The marksdwarves have had their share of the fun already. Time for the miners and mechanics to have a go.

Construction begins on a secret demon-slaying project...



Meanwhile my parents, grieving from the death of my big sister, do their very utmost to replace her. Noisily. And rather disturbingly.





Now that the last Scorpionfly Fiend has been slain, I trek down to the depths and open the door between Pocketball and the caverns. I jump in surprise to see a beast of the caverns waiting at the door for me! It's hideous, great tufts of dirty hair protruding from its unwashed face. Skin like grimy copper armour reflects the light of my candle. The stench is overwhelming. By Armok, it's...

...it's a thirsty and bedraggled MCreeper.



"FOR THE LOVE OF ARMOK, PADDYWAGON!" he gasps, hoarse and near despair. "I've been locked in the caverns for so long! I'd lost all hope! How did this happen?"

That's embarrassing. It seems that when I locked the caverns up after the battle, I didn't notice that MCreeper was on the other side. That was about a month and a half ago, not that the poor sod would have had any way of telling time in these lightless caverns.

"The queen ordered the doors shut, buddy." I reply. "I fought and argued, but she insisted they remain locked. I came down to open them as soon as I could get out of her sight."

I give him a little pat on the back as he drags himself back into the fortress. Next time I'll be sure to do a head count.

Meanwhile mechanics start flooding the caverns, reloading the cage traps and collecting the captured pokemon.



Zefermcdwarfpants' young son breaks down crying upon finding his father's broken body. Grow up, kid. I made a statue of him and put him in a gold sarcophagus, what more do you want?

As this is all happening, a new food craze hits Pocketball. I wade through the long lineup to try out some of Chef Unib's "masterful roast".



Looks like seed paste to me.

As I eat the disgusting carrot seed mash, a couple of miners come sidling up to me. This can't be good - relations between the miners' guild and myself have been rather strained since they figured out that all of my anti-demon plans involved sacrificing a miner to be torn apart by hellspawn. Thankfully these two are only here to inform me that one of their friends, Bomrek, has been missing for a week.



I grill them for a little more information. "Where did you see him last?" I ask.

"Well, last I saw him a Lampent had just come storming out of the caverns. I saw it light him on fire, crush his lip and give him a major spinal injury. But I was just walking by on my way to the tavern, I don't know where he went after that."



"No, I saw what happened after that. He and the Lampent, grappling with each other, toppled and went plunging down the old exploratory mineshaft by the forges."

"You mean the one that leads into the magma sea?"

"Yup."




"Could you put out a search party, overseer? We haven't seen him since then, we think he may have gotten lost."

I roll my eyes a little and go back to my business as Overseer. Fluffe9911 has been acting a little odd...









Quite an impressive artefact, though we have enough pictures of Glitteredplay killing people around the fort already. It's getting me down. On the bright side he's now a legendary blacksmith, which might come in handy - it's coming on Christmas, and my mom is being her demanding self.



But her Christmas gift can wait. I've got a better use of our legendary blacksmith's time. At the top of MCreeper's water tower, the highest point in Pocketball, a masterful gold statue is placed.





Rest in Peace Nopal.

With this, my reign winds to its close.





(save and notes for future overseers coming tomorrow morning, this was a bit rushed sorry)

[Paddywagon Man]

Save: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=13069

NOTES:

My anti-demon weapon is ready for use. Thousands of tons of rock are held up by a single spport and ready to plummet into the winding labyrinth I crafted below. To use it, mine out the wall to let the demons into the labyrinth. The many doors should slow them up enough that they get lumped into a single group. Once they're all in the top half, pull the lever I put in the Master Ball -



And crush them. Or if you'd rather do something else it's up to you, but the weapons's there.

Also we have a breeding pair of Hakamo-o but they're permanently berserk and a minor typo in the raws means they won't evolve - to fix it just go to creatures_seventhgen and change the word "JANGMO-O" to "HAKAMO-O" in the raws for their evolution.

[RedMageCole]

Successfully moved in and I finally have time to say hello to everyone!

Gonna miss you as a dorf, Nopal. You were a wonderful soldier and an even more wonderful artist.

Good to see a new player, Max! I wish you luck

And to hear that, Paxie, is a great honor. Thank you!

You guys are great; I'm looking forward to more updates. And if we all day... hey, I can always make a new community fort. This was wildly successful and fun to do, so why not?

[Maximum Spin]

I'm next, right? Got the save, will report back.

[Paddywagon Man]

Be nice to Stungin!

[Maximum Spin]

Be nice to Stungin!

He's still around? I wouldn't dream of letting him come to harm!
It remains to be seen whether there will even be an opportunity, though. Witness the following mini-update.
Excerpts from A Million Little Pichus: A Memoir, by Maximum Spin Spatteredgorges

It was an icy spring morning, the first of the new year, when I seized command of Pocketball. The sky was thick with igglybuff,

and the water thick with badger. The cavalier attitude of previous administrators had produced far too many pointless deaths, like that of fellow Flaaffy-enthusiast Nopal. It was clear that the time had come for my cavalier attitude to produce its share of pointless deaths. And so it was that the so-called ex-baroness, Paddywagon Man, passed his (her?) command to me. The war Ampharos behind me when I made my case can certainly have had nothing to do with it.

I spent the first few days of my term learning everything I could about the layout of the fort. From what I've heard, most forts keep a carefully cultivated series of notes for every new overseer, detailing the locations of critical functions. Pocketball is not most forts. Luckily, it's pretty small, so I was able to find everything all right. In the process, I did notice something strange - it looked like some previous overseer was stockpiling blocks to build some kind of cinnabar island.

So I decided to check our stocks to see whether we had enough that I could help with that, when I discovered the next strange fact about Pocketball.

It seemed that the trade depot contained a stack of ten. Or at least, this was in the books: when I went to the trade depot in person, I could find no such thing. Then again, I'm still not sure what exactly ten looks like, so I might have missed it.

From there, though, it was on to my first proper order of business. A horde of demons had been sequestered in an old staircase, and Paddywagon Man devised a plan to eliminate them. Unfortunately, Paddywagon Man's plans had developed a certain reputation, and none of the miners were willing to participate. The solution was obvious.

The miners were pretty thrilled with this development, although, unlike them, I was entirely confident in Paddywagon Man's ability to survive the confrontation. After all, she - in the process I had confirmed that Paddywagon Man was, in fact, a woman - designed the trap in the first place, and, as far as I could tell, she was probably agile enough to get away. She seemed to agree; after making sure she was dressed to impress the demons, she proceeded down to the trap chamber to open the way.

After several agonizing hours of waiting...

...she finally emerged, breathless but unscathed, from the demon exclusion tunnel.

Unfortunately, she reported that fully half the fiends continued to hang back at the top of the shaft.

Still, there was no time left to wait. The exclusion tunnel could only protect us for so long. Once we could hear the scratching and howling at the final door, I ordered the lever pulled.

When the last door fell, the shrieking of the beasts echoed across the whole length, breadth, and depth of Pocketball. Yet, just at the last possible moment, the fisherdwarf who had received the order managed to pull the lever in time.


And nothing happened.

The block that Paddywagon Man had suspended above the exclusion tunnel remained suspended above the exclusion tunnel. A moment's reflection immediately revealed why: while ordering the block mined free of its surroundings, Paddywagon Man had carelessly left behind a slim bridge of natural stone bridging the gap between the block's upper surface and the neighbouring wall. Because of the extremely high tensile strength of the stone, this was enough to hold the block aloft even after the lever-connected pillar had collapsed.

As a result of this tiny error, Pocketball was probably doomed. And, although Paddywagon Man was surely to blame, it had still happened on my watch, only eleven days after I took command. Something would have to be done.

But what something? I'm taking suggestions. I ordered a wall to be built at the end of the tunnel, but I doubt it will be reached in time. I could send the army to glorious death to try to stave off the horde long enough to seal the exit... again. Or we could try something else. Anyone have any ideas?

[Paddywagon Man]

Oh, that is as embarrassing as anything... still, they can only come through the minecart track as far as I can tell, and that can easily be blocked off. Wall it off at the top instead of the bottom, it'll be faster.

We lose the caverns again but that's no big loss. Still, in all likelihood that means a fourth Paddywagon Man.

Looking back at two years as leader of Pocketball I can't think of a single plan of mine that worked without some sort of hitch. Dammit.