Spring & Summer1st of Granite. The enemy has come!
The enemy then runs into the joint forces of the Grave Wardens and The Swamp Hunters, and proceeds to have an exceedingly bad day.
One of them is caged, the only survivor of the raid. That’s right, even the map edge has been no respite. We, on our side, have no losses, only two wounded (one from each squad).
With some assurance that the surface will be safe for the next three months, I drop all bridges and allow dwarves to pick everything from the non-fevering biome. The fevering biome gets a renewed batch of mass forbid, just in case.
18th Granite. While enemy corpses are hauled to the atom smasher, the revamping of the resurrection chamber begins. First, the cyclops is re-trapped, and the shutter bridges are raised.
Next, a wall is laid down; the cyclops cage is assigned to be rebuilt in the middle of the future 1x5 room, and in the newly-cleared dwarven room, I build the furniture that had been toppled by the cyclops: an excellent quality chair, a masterwork table and an artifact weapon rack.
6th Slate. The fort has 3 vacancies at minimum, 8 if the poor Rainbow Raptors are removed from the rolls. And not one blighted idiot has deigned to arrive...
16th Slate. I’d prefer you’d keep hauling, if I’m honest...
8th Felsite.
To cap off spring, I must say not much has ever happened. This is one of those seasons that consisted mostly of hauling. The defenses have some progress; the tower is no longer a wide open route into the fort:
Above on the surface, the future bee-keeping area is a few constructions away from completion; as soon as the older hives are collected, they’ll be deconstructed and moved on the roof.
The ‘new and improved’ resurrection chamber is a bit behind, but not that far. The old dumping zone was deactivated, and the input will be supplied from above. The drop spot was initially made right on top of that instrument, where manual dumping left them in… and then I remembered hostiles can climb; especially when a wall helps them along. So I move it in one of the older gaps:
Summer1st Hematite. We have a new siege. Not a wimpy one, either! Of the nine ‘actual’ military dwarves, four are both uninjured and unoccupied; they assemble under the surface, while all others flee for the safety of the deep fort. Then they’re let loose upon the enemy:
They have, without a doubt, given at least twice as good as they’ve gotten; between the spectacular murder spree and the cage traps, the siege is broken on the
10th of Hematite.
The resurrection chamber sees immediate use; our four ‘volunteers’ get dumped, from the stock list, where I think it’s much easier to find them than by digging through the carnage above:
For a baffling moment, or three in-game days, nothing happens; then I think to check orders, and find dwarves were told to ignore outside refuse. That’s rectified, and the dumping begins:
While I’m here with all jobs unassigned for everyone, I take the time to fill the squads. It seems like it’ll be needed.
15th. Nothing is happening; I presume the corpses need to be placed right next to the fortifications (this would neatly match up with why my own experiments have failed). So I pull the shutters, and trim the old dump zone - from a vertical 3x1 it’s reduced to a single tile in front of the necro.
16th. What the… didn’t I close the shutter? Oh, it was closed; I opened it. Oops.
To make matters worse, we have no forlorn ghouls; just ‘standard’ zombies.
Two have exited the dubiously-named resurrection chamber; one was trapped, and the other has escaped into the fort, busily chasing a glassmaker.
The door is locked, and the new army is called to put down the remnants of the old.
And then a minor disaster has gone down:
These two events are unrelated, from what I can tell: the tavern keeper overseer, Recon, has swiftly put down the loose zombie (Vabok's corpse, if anyone is interested). At the same time, one of the two backup lawgivers and former Grave Wardens, Tosid, has picked a fight with a scribe. Despite not having any weapons and being limited to punches… well… the above has happened. Now Tosid is collecting equipment, and running in terror from every fortress dwarf that comes in her way.
Oh, and we still have two zombies in the resurrection chamber.
Well, drastic measures must be taken. Tosid is made leader of her own squad, and sent on a mission to raze the thoroughly broken goblin pits of StableVile.
Her ‘squad’ is named Relieved Fountains. I mean, one way or another we’ll be relieved… either a hostile dwarf will be restored, or she’ll die. Either way, we’re relieved of her buggy loyalties.
Now I can only hope she’ll manage to leave the fort, while being terrified of everyone she meets.
Meanwhile, life carries on, and on the
20th of Hematite, the Grave Wardens are stationed before the resurrection room. The door is unlocked, the two zombies rush out (with tremendous speed, I should mention), and are swiftly struck down. Then the three other corpses are also marked for dumping, because apparently I’m at least as thick-skulled as a dwarf.
3rd Malachite. Tosid has returned from her expedition; as expected, she’s now fine with everybody.
11th. Of the three dead dwarves, the scribe has been resurrected as a forlorn ghoul.
The previously-existing ghoul, Vabok, has also been resurrected, as he was before. Both are now ‘visitors’ and won’t be shown in Dwarf Therapist unless that category is enabled.
I look for the last corpse in stocks - Ast - and re-dump it. Maybe we’ll get lucky, before dude rots away. I find another corpse, and tentatively mark it… then return to unmark it, because it’s a baby turkey.
Ast was resurrected, again as a standard hostile zombie. And again, the army is quick to put it down.
Alright. I think I can draw some conclusions from my little bout of !!SCIENCE!!.
Firstly, our necromancer has problems seeing corpses that aren’t right next to the fortifications.
Secondly, the motive cyclops also needs to be right next to his side of fortifications; probably for the same reason as above.
Thirdly (and more contentiously), a dwarf is set as ghoul or zombie once per dwarf, and it’s not going to matter how many times the poor corpse is killed and raised. It’s a good question how Nogood will behave if he ends up dead again. But I refuse to experiment… in the community fort; NoGood will die offline, and I’ll inform you of results.
I allow dwarves to bury their dead; until the next dead citizen, no more resurrection experiments will be made. Maybe the overpaca, but I need to load a new cage first. The now five zombified dwarves need slabs; they’re no longer recognized as citizens of the fort, and won’t be buried.
Oh. Speaking of. KingZultan is taking recent events very badly:
She hasn’t woven any cloth, as I initially intended; she was injured during the spring ‘invasion’, because for some bizarre reason she went into the Tall Bar instead of hiding away in the fort. She got pelted with arrows, and spent the rest of spring plus the first month of summer in the hospital. Then she went outside, saw the invader corpses still outside, and had a nervous breakdown immediately.
The other two are comparatively much better; one is a legendary+3 bone carver, who was set to make totems and crafts until he feels better. It’s not
that one, by the way;
that one is only Legendary+1, and also insane. The third one is Reg, who doesn’t have any remarkable skills to get him out of his funk; he’s in the most danger since I can't just get him to crank out masterworks until he's blissed out.
21st Malachite.
Avuz, one of our few non-feverish dwarves and legendary weapon-maker, was asked to use some bronze on, well, making weapons.
Too bad there’s nobody to give them to.
22nd Galena. At long last, the melancholic murderer has perished:
He’s quickly dumped into the resurrection chamber, and we have been met with success!
I now wonder if the problem with the other dwarves was that they were killed in combat, as opposed to other causes; causes that were less violent, and more alcohol-deprived. It shouldn’t be too hard to station a small squad in the resurrection chamber, and see the outcome…
The sacrificial subjects are chosen from the dwarves with outstanding health issues:
Amost and Kubuk are the only two members of The Covers of Silver, a new squad forbidden from either equipment, weapons or supplies. They are stationed not in the resurrection chamber proper, but in an adjacent room; the former jail, in fact. There they will sit, under a locked door, until at least one of them dies.
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Topic: Smallhands - nearly 40 years and still tiny! (Read 441142 times)