Winter1st of Moonstone. Winter is upon us.
I forgot to sell the totems. This is still a version of DF where totems don’t show up unless explicitly searched for (and also where totems do odd things when placed in bins - the entire bin becomes invisible to the trade menu, and doesn’t pop back up until the totems are dumped from it); together, they’re worth 170☼, so that would have saved me a few clothes. Ah well.
The liaison, as usual, picks a bunch of random crap to ask of us for next autumn; some of these I can’t trade, and some of these I won’t trade:
13th of moonstone: In a shocking display of competence, the dwarves have finished hauling all food to the proper pile. Now six of our thirteen dwarves have nothing to do. I suppose my next priority is sealing the stairwell, and digging a proper fortress!
After the enormous herd of skelks vacates the premises.
20th. The skelks have left, and the merchants have embarked. They stayed for one month and 5 days, which surprised me a bit - were they not supposed to trade with us for exactly one month? Or was that just a turn of phrase?
A flock of zombie ravens has popped up; we can take them. I’ll move all blocks in the fort in a stockpile near the stairwell, appoint our military, and begin the sealing.
Goden and Logem are our new military. Goden was appointed squad leader, for reasons which I hope are obvious: “She never becomes angry. She can handle stress.'' Yes please!
Logem is the hunter dude who briefly re-killed the corpse of Vukar. He’s a great dyer (level 11) so I guess he was looking for a change of pace, despite not being a risk-taker? Well worry not, my dude, we got you covered:
Both have just one level of crossbow skill. RIP Tekkud, with your glorious 5 levels that I bought on embark. It will be a while until you’re properly replaced.
Both have been stationed in the corridor that goes towards the shaft; neither has picked any crossbows, or quivers, or bolts. We have all of the above, and the squad has been activated. I am giving them one week, then regardless of their equipment, I’ll unlock the hatch, and they’ll station on the roof.
… In the meantime. I had an evil idea, which will potentially get me in trouble with the mountainhome: I want to use the caravan guards to clear the 3 zombie cages.
27th. The merchants have left the fort; my brilliant idea of emptying cages in their faces has fallen through. More disconcertingly, the merchants without wagons have decided to leave through the trap corridor:
If they die, I will not be responsible for their stupidity. In equal measure, if they die to zombie ravens, I will not be responsible for their weakness.
7th Opal. One merchant and his yak cow, who decided to leave towards the north unlike literally everyone else who went south (or was he scared off his path?), got slain by undead. He did take down two of the five ravens, and it was the skorse that did him in, so I’ll extend him some begrudging respect. His yak cow dropped right on the edge of the resurrecting biome, in a pool of muck and mist, so I expect she’ll get up and pay us a visit.
With this minor disaster done, I note at least Goden has packed herself some bolts, so the sealing will begin. The two marksdwarves are stationed on the roof:
All goes well, until I find that the damn military dolt doesn’t know the meaning of “station”, and has cheerily (or the opposite of it) fucked off towards the zombies to pick a fight. Damn it Goden, I had hopes for you. The roof is two tiles away from completion, so I take a chance: I quickly remove the station command, and inactivate the squad. Having suddenly become a civilian, Goden returns to the fortress. It is at this point when the cancellation message informs me her trek was for equipment. Seems I need to forbid some things.
10th. Finally, we are sealed in. A pillar was built over the stairway to the roof; we don’t need it anymore, and the dirt wall will be dug out. The ice will be floored over, and the stairs on top of the stairwell will be fully built. Our stone fort begins here and now:
Now it would be the time to plan out a broad layout. The map is rather compact - the stairs have stopped in semi-molten rock at level 69, and the surface is at levels 117-118. Depending on how the caverns look, this might hamper my usual fort building style, where the fortress grows from a central stairway, and doesn’t reach more than 40-50 tiles in any direction. I doubt it though; even excluding the aquifer, the caves, and the magma sea, I should still have some 35-40 levels of pure uninterrupted stone to work with.
At the bottom of the world, a wall corner is warm rock, from level 73 downward. Somewhere around there, we’ll have our smithy. I’ve ordered four 21-long, 1-wide tunnels at level 75; once those are done, I’ll make up my mind.
Going back to the other end, immediately under the aquifer there’s a layer of fire clay. Damn shame it will still flood from above, though; the only tiles that can be dug without flooding the fort are the two below the wall and surrounding channel. At some point, a little alcove should be dug out, so dwarves can have a reasonably-spacious clay collection point; fire clay can be made into clay pots which don’t need glazing.
Below the fire clay, we have 3 layers of dacite and 5 layers of phyllite; these layers will be left for farm processing - food, thread, cloth, dyeing, wood, and bone. Next, there are 6 layers of quartzite, and below that, there are 6 layers of obsidian.
In terms of pure financial value, it would be better to set shop in the obsidian layers, as they’re worth double compared to quartzite; despite that, I think I’ll place the crafting and living areas in the quartzite layers; they’re nice and white, and genuinely look a lot better.
So, at level 105 where the quartzite begins, I have sketched the layout of the stone crafting area:
The top left will have a mechanics’ workshop, and two mason’s. The very top right is where the jeweler workshop and its associated stockpile will be, and the other two are either crafts or masons, as necessity will dictate. Separator walls are more of a guideline, and will be eventually removed - especially between the top quarters, where it gets in the way of having four 3x11 stone stockpiles. Lower right is where totems and bones are fed into the craftsdwarf shops, and right used to be wood, in my old plans - though wood and bones should really be moved higher, to the farming zone.
At level 100, where the quartzite ends, we’ll have the mayor’s rooms, and main living quarters; the side opposite the mayor can accommodate another set of large rooms:
Below the quartzite, the noble rooms begin. I intend to make full use of the whole “x2 bonus to value” that obsidian brings; all noble rooms are following this pattern:
This particular set is intended for the baron, which is why it is “only” 9x9; a higher-ranking noble would have larger ones; whatever meets the value. The good thing is, each room can be extended without bothering anyone and anything. The bad thing is, every set of rooms basically locks out a level. Unless I move the tomb elsewhere, and allow one quarter as access point for digging... eh, I'll figure it out later.
Below the obsidian, there is andesite with veins of hematite through it. I’ll surely be digging that hematite… after the smithy is dug out, and while it’s being smoothed out. Effective workflow management!
Then we have a truly indecent 13 layers of diorite, before we hit level 75 and rhyolite. This is where I’ll dig the exploratory tunnels to find the magma sea, if you recall. Hopefully, I’ll find it from above, and not, y’know, laterally.
And that is all I’ll plot out for now. The farming area, I think, is best done in its own section. I need the stone and metal a lot more than the eggs and meat, anyway.
With all the miners busy, this still leaves 10 idlers, in a fort of 13. This is unacceptable. It is time to get a few things from the surface, especially as the wildlife right now consists of an owl and a wombat. The “topside” burrow is extended to cover the 81 tiles from the bottom right, opposite the muck and the zombies therein. The marksdwarves are stationed, at first next to the entrance, and when they’ll come there, above the ground. All trees are marked for cutting, all items that are scattered around have been reclaimed. Let’s get everything that can be gotten. And as fast as possible too, for which purpose I went and disabled the wood and corpse pile, defined a dumping zone next to the entrance, and marked all items on the surface for dumping. Let’s just get them inside now, we’ll sort them out later.
25th. While the surface reclamation goes with no incident, the digging on level 75 has suddenly stopped: seems I have found the bottom of a cavern:
I’ll let the miners dig through the other three branches; it wouldn’t be the first time caverns and the magma sea coexist on the same level.
Incidentally, that yak cow from the dead merchant has been caged. The trap corridor has been unlocked when I allowed surface access, and has once again proven its worth as an anti-frustration feature).
27th. Vucar’s partial skeleton, from way up in the muck sea, has found his way into the trap corridor, and has been promptly demolished by our one and only weapon trap. I was informed by the combat log, and got a bit more scared than I should have by the sudden reports.
28th. Remember when I said caves and magma seas can coexist on the same level? This might be what happens here:
Despite the risk of punching into caverns way before I’m ready, I’ll go one level higher and see if a tunnel to the south is still hitting warm rock. If not, I’ll dig here, and channel a bit to see how the magma sea looks like from above.
3rd Obsidian. A cloud of nefarious mist has drifted nearby. Whatever.
5th. That decision might come back to bite me; Meng, the second woodcutter we have, has stopped woodcutting to rest an injury. When checking his wounds, I found out his everything, including bones, were swollen with blood. Note to self: screenshot things like this.
8th. And now Meng is fine, and back at cutting trees. Ok. Whatever, once again. I’ll leave you maniacs alone, and see how the magma punch is going.
10th. Very well, apparently. Level 76 has no warm stone (that I can see), and level 75 is now presumed above the magma sea. So I dig 2 more tiles southward, and channel the second; look what I found:
Then I immediately floor over the channeled tile. Don’t want any lava critters getting in my face. As for the mighty forge itself, it will look something like this:
A column of 8 enclosed workshops - 6 forges, 1 glass workshop, 1 pottery. In the common area, we’ll lay 8 smelteries; that’s about enough, believe me. From the smelters to the stairs, there are exactly 11 tiles, perfect for stockpiles of raw materials. Between smelteries and forges, the 3 tiles can be turned into small bar stockpiles. The glass workshop & pottery will have their own stockpiles down below, where there are no smelters, and off in the south-west corner, where I’ll stockpile glass, pearlash, and sandbags for long term storage. And lastly, adamantine will have its own dedicated area, not included here.
Still on the 10th. Back on the surface, we've ran out of nearby items, and the nice friendly owl has been replaced by 8 zombie ravens; I recall everyone from the surface. We have managed to retrieve several corpses: GoombaGeek, Erica Blank (both of whom were buried in our temporary coffins, thus putting their ghosts to rest), Sinterous who’s got a ghost running around but has no free coffin, and two unnamed dwarves. Which reminds me I should also plot out a certain nifty catacomb. We now have three ghosts: Vucar Rallaven, whose bodily remains are still laying by the weapon trap which re-killed his undead corpse, Sinterous mentioned above, and Mego, whose own remains are still in front of the old entrance, where dearly departed Tekkud shot him re-dead at the start of spring.
In less sinister news, we also have some 50-60 logs, and assorted bits and bobs - clothes, one crutch, bags and barrels, one rope and some animal skeletons.
It is also at this point I realize that I have disabled all jobs related to food and farming, except actual farming. There are no butchers, brewers, tanners, shearers and milkers active, and that’s only the jobs we use; obviously this happened at some iteration of “let’s get everybody working on this thing”, but now that we have idlers all around, these jobs can all be reinstated (for all except miners and farmers, obviously). And speaking of farmers, winter is nearly done; it’s high time Kikrost leaves aside the seeds, and performs that highly detailed audit of every scrap of anything in the fort.
The ravens have killed off the skunk on the surface, and are fighting the buzzards who replaced it. It’s not going well for buzzards, who are, so far, losing 8 to 1. One of their numbers has already risen, and more doubtlessly will, as the aerial fight happened above the resurrecting biome. Team zombie isn’t as dumb as the lack of brains would indicate.
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Topic: [0.34.11] A Nostalgic Trip Through HorrorFailed - What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Read 5705 times)